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© Jack Harris-Bonham

May 13, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 7875

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming, today we wish to speak of misunderstandings. Today we bring before the congregation here gathered the idea that listening may be more of a passive activity than we imagined. When we’re listening there are times in which what we wish to hear stands in the way of what is being said. Empty us, Great Spirit, leech from us the agendas, hidden and open, as we gather here this morning. Make of each of us a receptacle of peace. If we try to put iced tea in our favorite pitcher, it will not fit if the pitcher is already filled with beer. The use of the receptacle is in the vacuity of its space. Make us empty Great Spirit as we gather here this morning. Our monkey minds keep chattering in the background, but we will in this worship space pull away from the distracting voices in our heads, we will gather our minds in the intervals between the noises, between the conflicting voices that call for us to react in a world that’s already rife with reactions. Also in this hour help us examine our intentions on which our road to hell is paved. Help us be aware enough to see that holding out for what seemingly benefits us, excludes us from participating in a salvation that may be disguised as something that we secretly despise, secretly wish would simply go away.

Mothers and fathers gather with their children this day. May they realize that who they are has nothing to do with where they came from or what has come from them. Mothers and fathers, your children are not you, and their actions are their actions. Having a child who is a brain surgeon doesn’t make you a brain surgeon, nor does it reflect well on you. Their glory and honor is theirs not yours. Likewise having a jailbird as a son throws no aspersions in your direction. Their crimes are not your crimes. Yes, we are all connected, but the fruits of one’s actions are one’s own even when pride and shame declare otherwise.

Bring us now to a point of stillness in which we can feel our hearts beating within us, feel our breath as it revolves in and out of us. In the space between the breaths let us pause and ask ourselves who is it that is breathing, since in fact, this breath started without our conscious intervention and continues when we slip into sleep and unconsciousness. As we rely on that hidden source to keep us alive, let us lean back on that hidden source and relax into the hereness of our existence. We are not in control. Hallelujah and Amen. We pray this in the name of everything that is holy and that is exactly everything.

Amen

SERMON-Funny Church Store

Introduction:

When I moved to New Haven to attend the Yale School of Drama in 1989, I rented a truck and car dolly and moved myself. I saved a bundle. Viv followed me in her 2002 BMW when we went to return the truck. We couldn’t find the place. We kept driving up and down this same stretch of New England back road, but the rental place was nowhere in sight. I stopped at a minit mart and went in to ask directions. The man behind the counter was from somewhere in Asia. I explained my predicament and his eyes lit up. “Yes, Yes, I know where that is. You go this way down the road, and turn right at the Funny Church Store.” He smiled glad that he’d been able to help. “The Funny Church Store?” I asked with a puzzled look on my face. “Yes, the Funny Church Store, you’ll see it on your right, it’s right behind there.” “Behind the Funny Church Store?” “That’s right!” I walked back to the truck and Viv yelled at me from her car window, “Do you know where it is?”

I walked over to her car smiling. “I know exactly, where it is.”

Driving toward the funny church store I was imagining a church whose Pastor would look and sound something like this – Jesus and Moses were playing golf. Moses approached the ball, and Jesus said, “What iron are you using on this shot?” “The four iron,” said Moses. “Well,” said Jesus, “Tiger Woods would use the five iron.” Moses stepped up to the ball and gave it a whack. The ball went pretty far, but then dropped into the lake. Jesus took his five iron and approached his ball. “I told you, Tiger Woods would use the five iron!” Jesus hit the ball well, it went further than Moses’ ball, but also dropped into the lake. Jesus went over and was walking on the water looking for both balls when a group of golfers played through. One of the golfers turned to Moses and asked, “Say, who does that guy think he is, Jesus Christ?” “Well,” said Moses, “he is Jesus Christ, but he thinks he’s Tiger Woods.”

After driving up and down the same stretch of highway I finally saw the Budget Rent a Car Sign. The rental place was directly behind a furniture store. A Funny Church Store.

Every time I retell this story about the funny church store I am reminded of my mother. You’ll get the connection later.

When my mother graduated from teacher’s college in Bluefield West Virginia, she thought her father might help her get a job – he was President of the local School Board. Daddy Jack was, if anything, a fair man who practiced his business like it was his church. He didn’t even want a hint of scandal around his family and to prove that he hadn’t influenced my mother’s position he appointed her to one of the schools in the middle of a coal-mining town. It was literally a one-room schoolhouse with one of the fifth graders that was 15 years old and out weighed my mother by a hundred pounds. My mother was terrified, but since she was her father’s favorite, he called her Queenie; she was determined not to leave this job until it was well done.

By recess, she felt she just about got a hold of the group, but was afraid of the energy that would be infused in the malicious assembly once they went outside to play. She gave them a stern warning before they recessed, “If I see you misbehaving on the playground, I’m gonna tap on the window, and when I do that you’d better get in here immediately or you’ll be late for your whipping.”

It was winter and the janitor of the school had built a fire in an old trash-burning barrel on the playground. The kids who got cold could go over there and stand by the fire. My mother looked up just in time to see the 15 year old 5th grader holding a cat’s face to the fire. She jumped up and tapped angrily on the glass. Retrieving the paddle she walked out into the front of the classroom to await the culprit’s arrival. She waited, but then realized the door to cloakroom was closed and he was probably waiting outside the closed door. When she opened the door, much to her dismay, there was a line of some 16 students, nearly half the class, that was lined up and ready to be paddled. They had all heard the angry tapping, and all were guilty of something. My mother took them on one by one, paddling each until her arm ached and she was nearly laughing. You’d have to know mother to understand that, when she fell and hurt herself, she always laughed. It was her way of dealing with the pain.

Today, my mother’s actions would raise more than eyebrows, she would lose her job, and probably be banded from teaching forever. But then again those that would condemn her today were not back in the coal fields teaching fifth graders who outweighed and towered over them. Mother went on to teach for nearly thirty years, winning award after award. She was tough, she demanded authority and attention and she got it, or else.

Mother’s background and upbringing stayed with her, along with her West Virginia twang, throughout a lifetime of travel when my father who was in the Air Force.

There’s a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals named Mrs. Malaprop. Mrs. Malaprop is known for saying the wrong thing at the funniest times. The word malapropos entered English usage around 1660, derived from the French phrase mal a propos (literally “ill suited to the purpose”).

Here are two examples of malaprops the first from Mrs. Malaprop, “She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile” and the second from Curly of Three Stooges fame after he’s been insulted by Mo, “Hey, I resemble that remark!”

There is a sense in which my mother was the West Virginia version of Mrs. Malaprop.

One summer evening after my freshman year at the University of Florida I’d brought some friends home. Late one night these about to be college sophomores, were drinking beer and eagerly talking about the Vietnam War, black power, the hippies, marijuana, free love, we were getting loaded and feeling the power of youth; always young, always strong and with our entire lives before us.

My mother had stayed up after dad had gone to bed, and she was sitting in the dining room with us, listening, and laughing at our jokes. My friends always loved my mother. Finally, she’d had enough white wine that she decided she would chime in when the black power issue came up.

“I read his autobiography, you know. It was fascinating.”

“Whose biography?” one of my friends wanted to know.

Mother was proud, this was her moment. She wasn’t in Bluefield any more, and her hillbilly friends were all forgotten as she smiled and said, “Why, the Autobiography of Moslem X!”

Everyone laughed.

My girlfriend at the time saw my mother leave hurriedly, her head down and embarrassed.

“Is she all right?” she asked concerned.

“She’s fine,” I said knowing I would hear about this later.

It’s weird. You see, the moment my mother had become the bell of the ball, Cinderella with the shoe that fits, the minute she had finally graduated from Hicksville, she took it personally, and declined the honor.

Had she thrown back her head and laughed with the rest of us, she would have risen in our eyes to the heights of Maureen O’Sullivan or Katherine Hepburn.

But she misunderstood; she thought her moment of triumph was her moment of defeat. She thought our laughter was a club to which she could not belong, when in reality she had built that club and christen it with mirth.

Speaking of mothers?

People in different parts of the world celebrate Mother’s Day on different days of the year because that day has different meanings. The ancient Greeks had a festival to Cybele, a great mother of gods, and it was celebrated around the Vernal Equinox. In Rome another holiday, Matronalia, that was dedicated to Juno, a male god, though mothers were usually given gifts on his day.

After the Civil War social activist Julia Ward Howe borrowed Mother’s Day from the English. Julia Ward Howe is best known for her “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was set to already-existing music, and first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 and quickly became one of the most popular songs of the Union during the Civil War.

Originally Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day was a call to unite women against war. For that first Mother’s Day in 1870 she wrote this Mother’s Day Proclamation.

Arise, then, women of this day!

 Arise, all women who have breasts,

 Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn

All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country

To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace,

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality

May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient

And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,

 To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions,

The great and general interests of peace.

So how was that message turned/deflected from mother’s concerns about their children’s deaths and mutilations – to concern for the mothers themselves? Can you see a parallel between what Jesus came to proclaim – the kingdom, right here, right now – and how they (the church) have taken his message away and made the church about the messenger. As Rudolf Bultmann asked, “How did the Proclaimer become the Proclaimed?”

The Greeks used to have a saying, don’t kill the messenger – well, the church went one step further, not only did they kill the messenger, but they perverted the message. The kingdom is someplace else; the reward is later – this is invaluable propaganda for fat cat churches, and fat cat ministers and priests.

You came here with an anticipation of what you want. Some want serenity, some advice, some spirituality, some the celebration of the human, some reassurance that things will be okay. But when will you understand that these expectations are born from the same desire that changed the original care of mothers for their children into what the National Restaurant Association calls the biggest sales day of the year? And when will you understand that these expectations are born from the same desire that changed the Jesus of Love One Another into the Inquisition?

You come to the funny church store looking for that painting to go with that sofa. You decide in advance exactly what you need, but hey, you’re keeping that a secret – you imagine in your heart of hearts that the funny church store can guess, that I can guess, that a person of the cloth can guess what you refuse to admit even to yourselves.

There is a line in the play, Medicine Men toward the end of the play the black servant of Albert Schweitzer, Paul Subira says, “We can’t pick out those we love “quite unexpectedly they are presented to us.”

It’s time you stepped aside and let your life live itself. It’s time you stop interfering, it’s time to look and see exactly what’s being offered you. This is your life.

My job, Dr. Loehr’s job, it’s not to lead you anywhere – into what – spirituality – a sabe world view – the one-upmanship of liberalism? God? We’re here for one reason and one reason only to define ourselves in public – to articulate existentially what we feel about our lives, our spiritual journeys – why?

It’s an old maxim of good writing. The more specific you get the more general it becomes. The hope is that if you witness this individuation, then you will accept the challenge and articulate who you are. And here’s the “Funny” as in odd/paradoxical part of the funny church store. The more we settle into the real life we are leading, the life we are being offered, the more we speak from within – the more we resonate with one another and the cosmos.

Recently, physicists have become aware of what are called fractals.

The basic concept of fractals is that they contain a large degree of self-similarity. This means that they usually contain little copies of themselves buried deep within the original. (Online source:

http://www.jracademy.com/~jtucek/math/fractals.html)

This notion has often been alluded to in poetry and fiction. But now it seems, it is physically demonstrable.

And that is why somas are, fundamentally, recreations of the organic model of the cosmos itself. (Hanna, 7)

If, we are models of the cosmos itself, according to the recent discoveries of fractals, then it follows that to be created in the image of God is to be created in the image of the cosmos. What exactly is the cosmos?

The cosmos is a continuous explosion of joy. It is sheer release and letting-go of an immense compression and, in a sense, depression. It is a 20 billion-year orgasm. (Hanna, 9)

Awareness is what allowed us to differentiate in the first place. We were a part of a family, but we moved away from home. Then we were part of a college, but we graduated. Then, we were part of a country, but our awareness took us beyond that to the point where we could and can identify with the pain that is suffered by other countries, other peoples.

We need to forget about trying to fix ourselves. There’s nothing to fix. Our lives … the ones we so desperately want to change can only be lived from the inside. First we’ve got to live the life we’re offered, then, and only then, can we possibly think of navigating elsewhere.

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© Jack Harris-Bonham

May 6, 2007

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, mystery beyond all naming we come to you this morning with the songs and melodies of one of your chosen people, Leonard Cohen. In that spirit I pray today the lyrics of one of his poems:

Don’t really have the courage to stand where I must stand,

Don’t really have the temperament to lend a helping hand.

Don’t really know who sent me to raise my voice and say:

May the lights in the land of plenty shine on the truth some day.

I don’t know why I come here, knowing as I do what you really think of me, what I really think of you.

For the millions in the prison that wealth has set apart, for the Christ who has not risen from the caverns of the heart, For the innermost decision that we cannot but obey, for what’s left of our religion I lift my voice and pray.

May the lights in the land of plenty shine on the truth some day.

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

Amen.

Affirmation of Faith by Don Smith

SERMON

In traditional Christianity sin is seen as a determent, a flaw, the fly in the ointment. My now deceased second father-in-law, Linus Hernandez used to say, “Everyone loves Elizabeth’s Taylor’s hair, but nobody wants it in their soup.”

Talking about sin as a determent is counterproductive.

There’s a better way.

In alcoholics anonymous, of which I am a proud anonymous member, it’s common to hear people say that they don’t regret or want to take back any drink or drinking that they did. The idea is simple. Whatever they did, however much they drank, the wreckage of lives that trails behind them – none of this can be regretted for two reasons – first, the guilt itself would kill us, or drive us to drink – poor me, poor me, pour me another drink! And secondly if that drinking got us to AA and we’re sober, and the promises are coming true, then, baby, all that suffering is exactly what it took!

Think of it as a trip in your family car. Yeah, okay, the radiator hose blew the third day, you had two flat tires the next day, and the water pump eventually went out. Regardless, you’re at your vacation spot thanks to the old soccer mom car! It’s hard to hate what’s brought you to a state of grace. It’s hard to hate what’s brought you to a state of grace.

There’s a tradition in some synagogues when members of the synagogue are invited to stand and tell a bad story on themselves. After the first story ends, someone stands and tells a worse than the first. Then another and another. The idea is – the parishioner with the worst story, wins!

And the prize isn’t shame – it’s solidarity! When the last confessor stands and tops all the other stories, then there’s a moment of silence and it that silence, there is a bonding, the human, oh so human, sigh of relief as all in that community know that they are blemished, imperfect. The moral high ground has been relinquished, and in the words of Second Isaiah, the high has been made low, and the crooked places made straight.

Martin Marty, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago tells the story of one of his grandchildren who when Marty had stepped down from the University, turned to Marty and said, “Grandpa, now that you’re retarded?” At first Marty winced because retardation is never a subject for jest, but then Dr. Marty remembered that to be retarded also means to be caused to move or proceed slowly; delayed or impeded. And that’s not always a bad thing. What would music be like if there were no variance in tempo – besides sounding like Philip Glass?

There is a form of enlightenment within Zen Buddhism that’s called a life of one continuous mistake. How can this be, you might ask? Being conscious of who you are, and what you’re capable of, knowing that your feet aren’t on a pedestal, but clay like everyone else’s – these are the things that actually raise all of life up.

When I was eighteen I fell in love with a blond tennis player who played for the University of Florida Gators. Joan and I were deeply in love. I drove up to see her during summer school, and convinced her that we needed to drive into the woods in my father’s Mercury Monterey, with a 357 engine, and four on the floor – to do watercolors of the woods. She either bought that story or wanted exactly what I wanted. We water colored for a bit, we did! Then we fell asleep like the children we were. An hour later lightning awakened us. The rain was coming down so hard that we couldn’t see out. I thought maybe I should move my dad’s car.

I’d driven off the Farm Maintenance Road and into the woods – where the trees were prettier, you understand? Twilight had slipped us on us, too. When I found what I thought was the Farm Maintenance Road it was covered in water. I turned onto it; I was shocked to discover that I’d driven into a stream. The Mercury Monterey sunk down to the axles, and it looked like if it kept raining, the water would be at window height in no time. I got Joan out of the car, but she’d left her shoes behind. I took off my brogans and insisted she walk in them. I went barefoot. We walked through many a tilled field before we caught sight of the lights of passing traffic.

By the time we gotten to the Interstate my brogans had rubbed terrible blisters on her feet while my feet were unscathed from walking through the fields. I thumbed down a semi and worried that this old truck driver would try something with my beautiful Joan, so I got in first and sat right beside him. He was a very nice black man, and without asking a whole lot of questions drove us into town.

My Beta Theta Pi Fraternity Brothers pulled my dad’s car from the river the next day.

The point is, what was then an awful experience is now emblazoned in my memory, and quite frankly it was better than sex.

Reynolds Price, who teaches writing at the University of North Carolina, developed a cancer on his spine. It crippled him.

Two things are important about Reynolds Price’s story. First, the disease and the loss of the use of his legs have actually improved his writing. And the second reason is striking – Price is in pain all the time, but he says that he made of his pain a bonfire and slowly over the years he’s been able to move away from the heat of the fire. He can still see the flames licking into the night air, but now, instead of burning in pain, he’s able to look at himself and his life by the light of that same fire.

We’ll never put out the flames of our critical thinking. Judge not lest ye be judged! What does that mean? The judging will always be there – we’re human beings, and we are suspicious creatures. So, if it’s not going away, and it’s unpleasant to be around, perhaps we should take a walk and expand our horizons. Yes, the jabbering, the crazy monkey mind as the Buddhist call it, it will keep right on jabbering, but maybe if we get enough distance, the rhythm of the unceasing chatter will become a white noise that doesn’t hook us, doesn’t drive us, doesn’t work.

The things you’ve done wrong. Tell someone who loves you what you’ve done. Unload. Unburden. Release yourself from the bondage of self. Uncover the cracks that line you like a raku pot. Open yourself to the idea that reaching out may, in fact, be letting in.

Buckminster Fuller once said that today’s society was too specialized. We have a tendency to want to focus our energies, put the heat on where we think the heat needs to be applied, to push forward in the direction we intend.

Fuller suggests, instead, that we should take our light and defocus – place it in the middle of a field and let that light shine out in all 365 degrees of the circle, then wait to see what’s attracted to that light.

Yes, there is a crack in everything, and yes, that is how the light gets in, but it’s also how the light gets out. Let’s drop our guard. Let’s shine out to those who walk among us. Perhaps if we all shine together the path of a common life will be uncovered.

Amen.

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© Jack Harris-Bonham

April 22, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

PRAYER

Mystery of many names, and mystery beyond all naming, we contemplate this past week and our hearts are heavy. We are frightened, worried, anxious, and uneasy. We find ourselves echoing the words of the character played by Sir Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man, “Is it safe?” That maddening question was asked over and over again to Dustin Hoffman’s character as he was strapped in a dental chair and tortured with a high speed drill. Is it safe? Is it safe?

It used to be said that there was safety in numbers, but the Holocaust, the Gulags, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, and bucolic rolling hills surrounding Virginia Tech seems to nullify such naive notions. It is not safe. It will never be safe, and we’d best get used to it. In the late 1940’s I was taught a prayer that I said each night as I kneeled beside my bed, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” I used to think that, that was a terrible thing to teach a child to say right before turning out the lights, but now, I’m not so sure. Perhaps, there was some wisdom in that prayer. Perhaps, it let me in on the adult secret that I hadn’t always been here, and there’d come a time when I’d be here no more. Perhaps, just perhaps, that was a good thing for me to know at the age of 4.

This past week’s massacre holds for me a bright and shining moment. Holocaust survivor Dr. Librescu stood in the doorway to his classroom, Room #204, Norris Hall and was shot five times as he yelled for his students to escape out the windows. The image of this man who had survived the worst that Nazi Germany could throw at him, the image of this man staving off death as his young pupils jumped to their freedom, this is the image that I wish to hold in my heart when I think of Virginia Tech. There was a massacre that day, but there was also an active demonstration of the power of love.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention once recorded a song entitled, It Can’t Happen Here. It was a parody and ironic because Zappa, whose favorite vegetable was tobacco, knew anything can happen anywhere, and more precisely, whenever something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us.

May we in the coming weeks not demonize the young Korean man who perpetrated those acts of violence. All efforts to scapegoat and marginalize him now are beside the point. He is one of us, and whatever his crimes we ourselves are capable of the same. To deny this is to invite disaster upon ourselves. Yes, it’s good to remember the noble acts, those done by the better angels of our natures, but we must never forget that other angels attend us and those lesser angels of our natures will, if ignored, act out when we least expect it.

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

Amen.

SERMON: Gangster State (Enemy Combatants All)

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.

(Martin Niemoeller)

Fear can make people do odd things, and it is the fear generated by the events of 9/11 and the events following that which have created an atmosphere of terror in this country. In this atmosphere the present regime has co-opted the rights of the people and is going about the business of greedy business in the name of our country. I don’t much like that. And I’m not alone in that dislike.

In an article copyrighted by the New York Times in 2004 Anthony Lewis has this to say;

“Fear of terrorism – a quite understandable fear after 9/11 – has led to harsh departures from normal legal practice at home. Aliens swept off the streets by the Justice Department as possible terrorists after 9/11 were subjected to physical abuse and humiliation by prison guards. Then, Attorney General, John Ashcroft, did not apologize – a posture that sent a message”

Anthony Lewis continues, “Inside the United States, the most radical departure from law, as we have know it, is President Bush’s claim that he can designate any American citizen as an “enemy combatant” – thereupon detain that person in solitary confinement indefinitely, without charges, without a trial, with a right to counsel. There was a stunning moment in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address when he said that more than 3,000 suspected terrorists (quote) have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States.” (End quote)

In all these matters, there is a pervasive attitude: that to follow the law is to be weak in the face of terrorism. But commitment to law is not weakness. It has been the great strength of the United States from the beginning. Our leaders depart from that commitment at their peril, and ours, for a reason that Justice Louis D. Brandeis expressed 75 years ago.

“Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes lawbreakers, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.”

Senator Edward Kennedy just this past month on the 29th of March 2007 stated at an event organized by the Alliance for Justice, “At the heart of many of the serious challenges we face is the Bush Administration’s lack of respect for the rule of law.”

What I present to you today is not meant to convince you that the political right is wrong, or that the political left is correct. All I really want to do is pull back from this lawless situation that we find ourselves in, and ruminate upon what others have done in similar situations. And within that rumination I hope that we can find the room to understand what is happening to us as a people and a nation. The murder rate in big cities in this country has gone up since the inception of the war in Iraq, and need I mention the events at Virginia Tech this past Monday? Perhaps if we can get a perspective upon what is happening, then we can more readily go out and act, and stop simply reacting.

If you think that there is no chance that you are in danger from this government and that there is no way in hell that you would ever be considered an enemy combatant then I’m afraid that you are in the gravest danger.

The trouble starts with a State that wants all the attention. They’re jealous of life and as an institution, just like a cooperation, it, the government, the state, really has no life. As the former Yale Chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, remarked, “To die for one’s own country is on the same level as dying for the Post Office.”

During the initial stages of the Iraqi War the New York Times had a picture of an Iraqi man carrying the wrapped body of his sixth month old son. He’s walking into a cemetery where the article says the gravediggers have all run away because of the bombing. Down from where the man digs a hole for his little boy, another man stands waist deep in a grave. The black flies are everywhere. They cover the ground before he thrusts the blade of the shovel in. He is standing among the remains of his brother who died in the last Gulf War. There isn’t much there. In a hefty garbage bag hanging over an adjacent headstone are what remains of his sister-in-law and her two daughters. Remains is so apt a word here. I turn the page quickly I simply can’t read any more of this. Staring back at me is a young Iraqi who has bandaged leg stumps holding him upright in his bed. I can see the Broadway billboards now, “Collateral damage does Porgy and Bess.”

This, from my former teacher and head of the philosophy department at the University of Florida from 1965-1971:

Authoritarianism is the long shadow which the human species has dragged after itself during its historical pilgrimage toward the light. No one knows whether, during our immensely long trek, we have made any lasting advance in the direction of that light; but everyone knows that the only way of having a direction in which to advance is by facing toward that light and intending that direction. (Dr. Thomas Hanna, End of Tyranny 35)

Now let’s consider the long shadows of political leadership and what those shadows can cover up, and where eventually we end up when so led.

The 20th Century theologian Karl Barth says this about Pontius Pilate:

He was bound to act according to strict law, but does not do so and lets himself be determined by “political considerations.” (Barth, Dogmatics in Outline 108)

Pontius Pilate, a man who essentially disappears from history, evaporating like the water that dripped on the floor after he washed his hands of the whole ordeal, broke a covenant that existed between himself and Rome. As an administrator and agent of the Roman Emperor, Pilate was expected to carry out the Roman law. But, Pontius Pilate did what was expedient. Expedient – politic though perhaps unprincipled.

Karl Barth gives me the title to my sermon here:

In the person of Pilate the state withdraws from the basis of its own existence and becomes a den of robbers, a gangster state, the ordering of an irresponsible clique. (Barth, Dogmatics in Outline 111)

And what does this mean that Pilate broke the Roman covenant – what does it mean that he would not uphold the Roman law?

Covenant is relationship and relationship presumes personhood. As long as Pilate acts according to what he knows to be Roman Law he occupies the personhood of his life. Yet, when he breaks covenant, even the pagan covenant of Roman law – he breaks with relationship, personhood and becomes a loose cannon.

What does Pilate do? He does what politicians have more or less always done and what has always belonged to the actual achievement of politics in all times: he attempts to rescue and maintain order in Jerusalem and thereby at the same time to preserve his own position of power, by surrendering the clear law, for the protection of which he was actually installed. Remarkable contradiction! (Barth, Dogmatics in Outline 111)

What I’m saying is this; in a post-modern world where we have lost the myth of reason’s ability to explain the universe or God, when the metanarrative seems to have lost its foothold, where ambiguity reins downs upon us until we are soaked in the showers of impotency, perhaps it is time to rejoice! Rejoice that we live in a time when the State is a negative format. Rejoice that we live in a time in which we can understand the developing scenarios. Rejoice that we live in a time when we can see in the dark room of our souls that the polarities have been reversed. Everything we know to be light is seen now by the state as darkness and everything that shines forth from the state is nothing but bright midnight.

Are you confused as to what to believe, what to act upon, what next to do – take a look at this country under its present regime and go ye therefore in the opposite direction.

Yet, unfortunately, the imagination of the people in this country is produced, coddled and prodded by sound bites & wars that look like super-bowls. Smart bombs, and shock and awe are Reality Television at its ultimate destination – we sit and watch as other people die.

As Rome degenerated and eventually fell the emperors gave the people bread and circuses to fill their stomachs and amuse their spirits. We watch as the covenant is being broken and we cheer as the pieces fall down around us. We fail to see that those maimed, starved and blown up are, in fact, ourselves.

In the immortal and unforgettable words of the cartoon character Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The reason we are the enemy is we are out of covenant and communion – even with ourselves.

As Thomas Paine expressed it – “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives (in) to a superficial appearance of (its) being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” (Hanna, The End of Tyranny 13)

As time goes by and more and more original wrongs slide into the category of the right we begin to be able to witness horror and turn away with a shrug. How long will it be before Virginia Tech becomes a documentary, is given an award, and we forget about it? But even though these meteorites of injustice do not annihilate us they do alienate us.

Susan Sontag recently wrote in The Nation;

It will always be unpopular – it will always be deemed unpatriotic – to say that the lives of the members of the other tribe are as valuable as one’s own tribe. (Sontag, The Nation 11)

If freedom cannot be found in the Gangster State, then there’s even less hope for the dominant culture’s churches. Since the time of the early Levites when the high temple positions were up for the highest bid, churches have been tainted by the State. There have always been and always will be gangster churches mirroring gangster states. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his feelings about the German Church’s actions during World War Two would be a good witness here.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Cassius says, “And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf, but that he sees the Romans are but sheep.”

The truth be told we are not comfortable in this society with the gray areas of life. Reason and its metanarrative have brought us to a place that appears to be a crossroads. One road leads to truth, life and justice – the other to destruction. Unfortunately, the roads are marked with a sign that spins freely in the ground at one moment announcing the road to the right being the road to perdition, then a change in the wind declares it to be the road to the left.

Left or right, it simply makes little difference at this point in our country’s history. “For nearly 800 years since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, our laws have insisted that every single human being is entitled to some kind of judicial process before he or she can be thrown into jail – We have gone back to a pre-Magna Carta medieval system, not a system of laws, but of executive fiat, where the king – or in this case the president simply decides, on any particular day, I’m going to throw you into prison.”

And that prison is a small “Devil’s Island” comprising 45 square miles at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Guantanamo is, in fact, at this point in time, an interrogation camp – the kind outlawed after the Nazi Holocaust in the Geneva Convention of 1949. It is an interrogation camp that is totally and flatly illegal. During the 17th Century the English Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act to keep political prisoners from being sent to remote islands and never seen again. This practice is precisely what the Bush Regime has revived.

George W. Bush mirroring Pontius Pilate has broken covenant with the law of our land. Covenant is relationship and relationship presumes personhood. As long as George W. Bush follows the law of the United States and the Magna Carta he can be said to occupy the personhood of his life. Yet when George W. Bush breaks that covenant as he has done by ruling by presidential fiat, then he breaks relationship with the law of the land, he breaks relationship with the personhood of his life, and be becomes nothing more than a loose cannon, a man beyond the law – there is a name for this. George W. Bush is, in fact, in sheer opposition to; the Constitution of the United States, the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the will of the people and the Kingdom of God whatever you perceive that Kingdom to be.

We can blame it on 9/11. We can blame it on the President. The President can blame it on Osama Ben Laden and the terrorists can blame it on fate, but “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

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© Jack Harris-Bonham

April 8, 2007

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, 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.

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© Jack Harris Bonham

April 1, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

Prayer

Mystery of many names, and mystery beyond all naming, today we’re going to talk about you – the mystery. Wanting to speak about profound secrets, and enigmas – things beyond human comprehension puts us in the rather embarrassing spot of having to wing it! May our wings be sturdy enough to buffet the winds of doubt, may we journey over the sea of profound inexplicability, and resting upon the mast of a fishing boat may we watch as odd forms are brought from the depths. May our spirits be like those in dreams as we watch, marvel, and do not fear that which is beyond reason.

It’s not knowledge that we seek this morning. We have knowledge, and ways of getting more. But rather it is an understanding of our place in the scheme of things that we intuit this morning. Give us the wisdom that goes beyond mere knowledge to that place in our hearts where we comprehend a peace that passes all understanding. It is that peace we look for, it is that peace that we desire, it is that peace that lures us into the unknown.

May we forgive ourselves for not being totally human. May our compassion override our sense and may we reach out even when we fear to do so. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt once said that all we have to fear is fear itself. But we fear love, we fear acceptance and rejection, we fear poverty, we fear the shame of growing old and out of control – the real question is what is it that we do not fear?

Sitting quietly, and letting our breath slow down may we land in a spot where the good and the bad are but names for preferences, may we sit as the rocks, immovable, constant, and always present. May our hearts grow to accept whatever it is that comes our way, and may we see in each instance a chance to simply be there.

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

Amen.

The Great Escape: The Baptism of Jesus

as Seen From the Viewpoint of Jesus, Himself

Matthew 4:1-11(NIV) Gospel of Judas 2:16-20

(Jesus said) “Let whoever is strong among you humans bring forth the perfect human and stand up and face me.” And they said, “We are strong!” But their spirits did not have the courage to stand up to face him – except Judas Iscariot. He was able to stand up to face him, even though he was not able to look him in the eyes, but turned his face aside.

(Translated by Karen L. King)

Introduction:

(Go out into the congregation and walk up and down looking at as many who will let you – return to the pulpit.)

I’m very happy to be here today.

I saw many things as I walked among you. The eyes are, after all, the windows of the soul.

My name is Judas Iscariot – and no, I am not the warm up act for Jesus. Jesus chose not to come here today. More of that later. Why, you might be wondering, am I here? Good question! I’m here because I was the favorite disciple, and I remain the favorite. It’s a long story.

Jesus knew and he still knows that he can count on me to tell the story, set the record straight, lay it out for you so that – perhaps – you’ll understand? There’s always the chance that you will not understand, or choose not to want to understand. That’s okay, many have not understood, many have gotten it wrong.

I know that I am expected to speak of Jesus? Baptism. Jesus, and I, we have spoken of this event many times. Each time, we seem to learn more. It’s as if the baptism itself were still going on, in some bizarre and timeless way. Like the baptism was a marriage and funeral of sorts, a ceremony of union with death and life that has lasted to this very day, this very hour, this very moment.

I’m very happy to be here today!

Once Jesus said to me, “Come and I will teach you about the things that no human will see. For there exists a great realm and a boundlessness whose measure no angelic race has comprehended.” [Jesus loved to speak in hyperbole.) He continued, “In it (the boundlessness) is the great invisible Spirit – the one whom no angelic eye has seen nor any inner thought of heart contained, nor has anyone called it by any name.”

(Gospel of Judas 10:1-4)

It’s like a Koan. The Great Invisible Spirit that no angelic eye has seen, so obviously, it’s not in heaven. The Great Invisible Spirit that no one’s heart has been able to imagine, so that it’s not of human origins. The Great Invisible Spirit that is beyond naming – mystery of many names, mystery beyond all naming.

I’m very, very happy to be here today!

When I was a boy, my friends and I used to play near the dunes where the Goat Lady lived. The Goat Lady was old, real old. There was a wrecked chariot in those dunes, and we boys imagined that the Goat Lady had once been the lover of the Roman Centurion who had wrecked the chariot and lost his life. She stayed now in the dunes, because it was the only place that had anything that still could remind the old woman of her lover, when he was in his prime, healthy, strong, vibrant, tanned and delicious. We, too, dreamed of a time when the Goat Lady had been young and beautiful.

Now, she herded a scrawny bunch of goats over these dunes, drank their milk and occasionally they said when a goat would meet with an accident and die, she’d cook its meat and eat its strength. Yet – no one could remember ever smelling the smoke of a goat meal. We boys knew why! She lived off the bodies of boys who had disappeared from their villages, and we were thrilled that in those dunes, we faced more than simply an old woman. We faced a fierce enemy – an old, evil one who lived off the flesh of young boys.

One afternoon we took some apples out into the dunes and ate them there. I grew sleepy and napped. I was awakened by the sound of laugher. Opening my eyes I expected to join in the fun, but instead I couldn’t move. I’d been buried up to my neck in the sand. My friends circled me chanting, “The Goat Lady’s coming! The Goat Lady’s coming!”

One of the boys keeping watch came running from the top of the dunes. His expression told everyone that what they chanted was true. She – was – coming.

They were gone before I could beg them to stay. I could hear the belled lead goat as it made its way toward me. I squirmed, I wriggled, nothing. My bowels moved and – I passed out.

When I awakened the sun was setting. I had been pulled from my grave. I had been cleaned up and was wearing a rough white robe. I remember wondering if I had died and gone to heaven, yet the hole was still beside me – the empty tomb!

I want you to know – from that day till this one – I have never been afraid – ever – well, almost never! I had been reborn, recast, remolded into something very much like me, but not quite me. It was as if I was this big energy – The Great Invisible Spirit – that now simply went by the name of Judas Iscariot.

The feeling didn’t last. You notice that. You feel great and think, this is the way it will always be – in love, fully invested, made in the shade, got your swerve on – but no, things change.

The mind that stops is the mind that dies. Latching onto something in our life, in our presence – stopping the mind to rest in the shade of good feeling – these are the things that rob us of our ability to simply – keep – going.

I’m so very happy to be here today!

Jesus, now, he had the mind of someone who could simply keep going. They stood around him, and they all had stones. There was that beautiful woman, still smelling of the bedchamber, and the eyes of the men – those eyes. They were looking for a victim, hell, they had found a victim, but they were feeling generous, hey, let’s share this adulterer with the new prophet – that weird one from Galilee – he won’t know what to do!

What would you do? The leaders of your community standing against a law breaker – an outsider – wanting you to light them up so that the disenfranchised can get what they deserve. It’s a lot of pressure.

But that Jesus, hey, man, what can I say? Never knew a man who knew human nature like that man. There they were with all those – rocks! The sheer enormity of them – a crowd full of rocks and strong arms, working arms, killing arms.

You know that saying “Can’t see the forest for the trees!” Well, they got it backwards; it’s really “Can’t see the tree for the forest.”

Jesus wasn’t worried about an arsenal of rocks, no; he was just worried about that first rock. Yeah. He knew, that’s the one that would be the hardest to throw, that first rock was more than simply a rock – that was a modeling rock, an expression of a throwing behavior and my friends, that’s all a mob wants is a model, give ’em a model – Sieg Heil! – and you can get them to do anything.

The blood of the genocides of every generation scream now from the rocks themselves, “We are innocent! We are innocent!”

Jesus? mind didn’t stop, you see, he bent down and drew on the ground. He doodled!

The fate of a young, healthy, sexy woman was at stake – she was so close he could smell her – and he doodled on the ground! You can’t fake that. That’s the stuff of legend. I was there, and I was armed and ready. Jesus, what a party pooper!

(Mocking voice) Let he who is without sin throw the first stone! Man, this guy could mess up a wet dream!

That one little sentence – Let he would is without sin throw the first stone – and all of a sudden it’s a rock dropping contest!

When I was a boy I used to pester the blacksmith in my village. Well, all we boys did. Fire and smoke – name me a boy who doesn’t want to play with fire and smoke. The blacksmith was always warning us, “You’re going to burn yourself. Be careful!”

One day I saw the most beautiful horseshoe, pretty and new, I picked it and dropped it.

“Burned yourself, didn’t you!?” came the blacksmith’s laughing retort.

“No,” I said, “it just don’t take me long to look at a horseshoe.”

Yeah, my mind bounces, too. Maybe that’s what attracted us to one another in the first place. Jesus and me.

He gave me power over the purse cause I could figure things in my head, and was good at business. He mocked me sometimes for thinking too much about money, and then that jerk Michael Angelo paints me clutching my purse and spilling the salt. Salt and money they were equals back then – one as precious as the other.

But Jesus knew. When the chips were down, when there was no one else to turn to, then he could turn to me. My mind could follow his, we could move together and I could see what he was driving at – at least part of it.

I did stand up to him. True, I couldn’t always look him in the eye, but I stood up when he needed someone to stand up. “Stand up, stand up, for Jesus you soldiers of the cross, lift high his royal banner, it must not suffer loss.”

He told me I’d be cursed for all time, and jokingly referred to me as, “The Thirteenth God of the Thirteenth Realm.” What a sense of humor, what a weird sense of humor. Jesus would have liked Austin – probably lived south of the river.

“Keep Jesus Weird!” That’s the bumper sticker I’m waiting to see.

I am so very, very happy to be here today.

Jesus knew the holy books and the holy stories. We didn’t call him Rabbi for nothing, ya know!

He talked of Ezekiel and the contest he had with the priest of Baal. Ezekiel challenged the priest of Baal to a sacrificing contest. The priests of Baal went first and to tell you the truth, I can’t remember how good their sacrifice was, cause no matter how good theirs was, that wasn’t the point.

The point was old Ezekiel was the man when it came to sacrifice and he had a deep and abiding faith in the one whose name we do not speak.

When the priests of Baal had finished with their meager sacrifice Ezekiel – what a showman! Ezekiel has buckets and buckets of water poured on the wood of the sacrifice, drenches it! Then, he calls down fire from heaven and wham-o! The altar is burned so completely, that there is nothing left of the sacrifice. Nothing! The crowd went wild! (Cheer into microphone)

But old Ezekiel he was just getting warmed up. He showed the crowd that there was absolutely nothing up his sleeves, and then – he called down fire upon the 400 priests of Baal – wham-o! – and it was like Hiroshima.

You’d think that Ezekiel would be pretty happy at this point – sort of like Evil Kenevil jumping the Grand Canyon and not getting hurt.

But no, Ezekiel went away by himself right after that. He went into the wilderness and hid in a cave, and didn’t eat for days. He sat there listening for the voice of the one whose name we do not speak, waiting for a comforting word from his Lord and Master.

The wind blew mightily outside the cave and at first Ezekiel thought he heard the voice of Lord in the wind, but then realized you could hear whatever you wanted to hear in the wind. A storm came along, and there was lightning and thunder and Ezekiel listened carefully for the voice of the Lord. But the voice of the Lord was not in the wind; not in the storm. But after the storm, when the quietness of evening settled on the cave and the dancing firelight images made their way across the cave walls that’s when Ezekiel heard the voice of the Lord. The still small voice.

The still small voice – is still small. It’s not in the stock market – not on the World Wide Web – not on your cell phone. It’s in the quiet. It’s in the silence. It’s in the gaps.

Jesus heard the voice of the wind, but it wasn’t the voice of God. Satan has been called the Prince of the Power of the Air. The Prince of the Power of the Air what a nice way to call someone a bullshitter!

And what did Satan say? “Hungry Jesus, well, you’re the son of God, command these stones to become bread!” But the voice of the Lord was not in the wind, not in the air, not in the prince of the power of the air. Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Then Satan took Jesus up to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem – now Jesus swears he didn’t eat for forty days, but it sound to me like he might have stumbled onto some mushrooms! What do you think? So there he is with Satan standing on the pinnacle of the Temple, and Satan says, “Throw yourself down, for it is written he will give his angels charge over him, and will not allow him to strike his foot against a stone.”

Jesus felt the adrenaline. Sure. Standing way up there his feet itching, he could feel the wind tugging at his clothes, as he did a swan dive into the hands of God.

But the Lord wasn’t in the adrenaline, and Jesus said, “Do not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

So now Satan took Jesus to door number three; the highest mountain in all the world and showed him all the storming activity of mankind, the hustle and the bustle, the moving and the shaking, the glitter and the gold, Jesus could have it all for a simple nod in Satan’s direction.

But the voice of the one whose name we do not speak – the Great Invisible Spirit – was not in the storming of humankind

And Jesus said, “You don’t hook me, Satan. My mind sees you, acknowledges the power of evil in the world, and moves on. I’m not stuck in evil.” We are here to serve the still small voice. If you can’t hear it, how can you serve it?

Listen. (pause) The still small voice is still small.

I am so very happy to be here today.

The Romans were getting tired of the trouble Jesus was causing. They and the Jewish leaders. It was Passover and they just wanted the festivals to go on without a hitch. Tempers were high and the crowd was involved.

They hallelujahed when Jesus entered Jerusalem and now their voices were vicious, rapacious, sanguine.

Pilate offered Barbaras, but the crowd would have none of that. They had raised him up and they could take him down.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Jesus knew that if he weren’t careful, the group he’d gathered about him, those called his disciples, would be dispersed before he could show them his best prophetic trick. We all need our audience – his twelve and the others who are rarely mentioned. Perhaps they gathered for the last time there in Jerusalem?

He pulled me aside. He told me what to do. I was to tell them – the authorities – where he would be that night – in the Garden – surrounded by sleeping followers.

He told me, he said, “As for you, you will surpass them all. For you will sacrifice the human being who bears me. Already your horn is raised up, your anger is full, your star has passed by, and your heart has prevailed.”

(Judas 15: 4-8)

I turned him in. It was a betrayal – of sorts. Without me, there would have been no Road to Emmaus. Without me, there would have been no surprises in the Upper Room! Without me he couldn’t have shown them the trick – the secret behind it all. “Pay no attention to the Spirit behind the curtain.”

Conclusion:

You know my reward. It has been written that I hanged myself, but the truth is, they stoned me. And I don’t mean they took me behind the stable and shared a Doobie with me. No, they picked up stones – maybe the same ones that had been dropped earlier, ya think? And the modeling came easy. They’d run off and not seen Jesus crucified, but they’d seen others crucified. The modeling came compliments of the state, and their anger turned those stones into a which stone can be thrown first contest. They sent me into the Spirit world.

And it is from the Spirit world with the breath of Spirit that I speak today.

Jesus has left the building!

In other words?

“You can kill the protestors, but you can’t kill the protest!”

I’m so very glad to be here today.

As I walked around among you this morning I found what I was looking for. I saw it there in the meeting of our eyes. Spirit recognizing Spirit. And the still small voice though still small, has many listening and some even understanding.

You don’t need to believe this. It’s not demanded. Really nothing is demanded. It’s all quite all right, just like it is.

Some day the human being who bears you will be sacrificed. It’s true. Already your horn has been raised up, your anger full, your star has passed by, and your heart – your heart will prevail. I just know it.

Amen, and again, I say, Amen.

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© Jack Harris-Bonham

March 4, 2007

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, we come here this morning with smiles on our faces. If you’re not smiling then at least grin, or place your tongue firmly in your cheek.

The world is a serious place – we know this! People get blown to bits in it everyday. Children are molested, women are beaten, soldiers die horrible deaths, or they survive with terrible life-altering wounds, lovers are betrayed, dogs are run over, cats are drowned, and the trash is not taken out. And no, we are not equating any of these actions with the others!! We know violence is the foundation of cultures worldwide, but what is the point of dwelling on simply the negative?

There is a balance that struck in the body between sodium and potassium and without that balance our electrolytes – made up of positive and negative charges – would be out of whack and we would die.

So admitting the terrible we pass on today to dwell on other matters. Or maybe we simply wish to nod in the direction of the world’s failings – if the negatives of life can be said to be failings – and look upon the jewels that sparkle on the river as the sun reflects off its surface.

Sure, we know they aren’t real jewels, but that doesn’t stop our imaginations from seeing something where it really doesn’t exist and telling a story about it. Tell a child that those sparkling jewels on the river don’t exist, go ahead, explain about the sun’s rays and the reflexive properties of water – the only reaction you’ll get from a child is that look of boredom as they realize you’re trying to kill their imagination. Besides, everything manmade was once something simply imagined.

Sure imaginings are nothing more than mental notions, creations, or conceptions of a poetic mind,

– but wasn’t it Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Harvard Divinity School Address who imagined that a time would come when the miracles of the Bible would be replaced by the miracles of green meadows and falling rain,

– wasn’t it the Plains Indians who imagined that their Ghost Dancing would bring back the buffalo and make the white man disappear,

– wasn’t the imaginings of Holocaust survivors – making plans for a seemingly non-existent future – that kept them alive when others around them were dropping like flies,

– wasn’t it the imaginings of the boy Sam Clemens while rafting on the mighty Mississipp that gave birth to the man Mark Twain,

– wasn’t the imaginings of Jan Hus, as he passed the cup of the Eucharist over the railing to the common people, that led to the flaming chalice of this denomination,

– wasn’t the imaginings of a poor Galilean that all God’s children could live in peace that created a world religion that went on to pervert that poor Galilean’s message to the point of total non-recognition,

– isn’t our own imaginings that someday our lives will fall in place that keeps us going, supplies us with the energy that pushes our lives forward in spite of the entropy that leads us toward the grave?

This morning we’re here to celebrate imagination, story and the inherent silliness of all sentient beings.

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

Amen.

SERMON: The Baptism of Jesus

as seen from the vantage point of the Jordan River – Israel’s Mississip

“The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” So begins Hal Holbrook’s one-man show concerning the life of Mark Twain. Where would Samuel Clemens have been if there were no Mississippi River. The young writer knew the lesson of a prophet not being accepted in his own homeland, so he dropped the name, the tag that had followed him thus far, and took another. There on the mighty Mississipp Clemens first heard the call of the boatswain as he swung the leaded line that gave safety and security to River Boat Captains as they navigated a river whose muddy bottom was changing daily.

Without the mighty Mississipp Twain would have been traveling by stagecoach, wagon train, cattle drive, railroad, or even possibly on foot. And what daring-do name would he have sifted from those experiences? He could have called himself, “Westward Ho!” But the later generations of freed slaves would have had a field day with that one! He might have gone under the nom-de-plume of, G. Haw, or maybe, All Aboard! – now there’s a name that gets everybody on the same track – the point is, who’s to say whether Samuel Clemens would have made it without the river, that old man river, it’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi mud river, that artery of America that carried what the north made to the south, and what the south grew to the north, that equalizer of society where well-healed gentlemen, loose ladies, and cards combine to make fortunes for some, and some paupers forever!

I am the River Jordan. I know. It inspires nothing nowadays. There was a time when simply that pronouncement, I am the River Jordan, would have sent a chill of panic, pride and purpose through the listening world. But the world was smaller then. In that part of the now spacious world where I still flow, I still hold sway. There are those who remember, those who cow-tow, those who covet, those who wail as they are immersed beneath my murky waters. Yes, I make a difference to some, and am grateful for the work, but the world at large, the movers, the shakers, the prophets, the healers, the wise men, the fools, their lives still fabric the world, but their connection to me has all but ceased.

In the interest of world economy the world is being destroyed. Global warming, no longer the hex of Green Peace, but a front page New York Times reality, pollution, acid rain, raw sewage and neglect have created a disconnect between those who are two thirds water, but no longer consider the source and that disconnect is about to take its revenge.

“Now you say you love me, and if it’s true – well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river, I cried a river over you!”

You may think that my time has come and gone, and that being a river I am nothing more than a way through which water passes, but I could say the same about you.

Rather I will tell you of my life, what I have seen, those that I have touched, blessed, baptized, and when I’m through you can babble like that Greek idiot Heraclites and swear that you never stepped into the same stream twice, but in the end you’re still all wet. You do not understand that my touch can heal, my touch can aid armies, my touch can bring the dove of God descending upon the head of one of his sons – my touch can confer the crown of eternity – not knowing this, you turn aside, uninterested.

But who am I to boast? I’m just babbling on here, running on as it were, seeking my own level, so much water under the bridge, a stream of consciousness, if you will.

They say that there are no more great ones. They say that those who rule now, both politically, and economically are but the midget children of a race of giants.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:1&2 NIV)

Imagine if you can, maybe you’ve felt this in a dream, or maybe someone you really loved delivered this feeling to you with the intimate touch of their body to yours, or maybe you just have a good imagination, but think of it – the Spirit of God hovering over you, close as a breath, caressing the wetness of oblivion – oh yes, darkness was over the surface of the deep – imagine you and God like this! (Show them your crossed fingers)

I know. I know. I’m in a Unitarian Universalist Church, okay, okay so most of you could care less about God and you being like this (show them the crossed fingers again). Yeah, yeah, I get it. There’s a tendency among liberal religionist to take those two fingers and have the index bow to center, but you’ve forgotten something when you raise those contorted fingers to God, you have forgotten that an index is something that serves to guide, point out, or otherwise facilitate reference. When you flip off God, all you’re really doing is bowing to the center – and you call yourselves leftists, liberals!?

The point is God exists whether you like it or not. If you have the word in your vocabulary, if you know what the word God means, then the existence of God cannot be denied. To say that you don’t believe in God, well, that’s tantamount to saying you don’t believe in words, and you do, you do believe in words. Even atheists define themselves as being “without God.” UU’s may not have creeds, at least not ones that they have written down and repeat religiously, excuse the pun, but UU’s do have patterns of thinking and those patterns are represented in catch phrases – the seven banalities – and those phrases repeated often enough become a liturgy – ceremonial rites that invoke, remember, give thanks, bless, praise and present offerings. Within traditional liturgy these rites center on God – if not God, then what do these rites center on in this church?

In the 19th Century one, John William McGarvey, preached a sermon entitled The River Jordan. In that sermon he noted several wonderful things about me that makes me stand head and shoulders, or should I say headwater and banks, above all other rivers in the world. And if you were thinking that this man was exaggerating then I would draw your attention to one of his biographers who said concerning Reverend McGarvey, He relies almost exclusively on facts and has very little imagination.

I, the Jordan River, am mentioned approximately 175 times in the Old Testament, and about 15 times in the New Testament. You can see a pattern there, I’m sure. Interest in me waned as time went by. For example, how many of you can tell me which direction I flow in? Where do I begin, and where do I end?

I begin in the heights of Mount Hermon north of Galilee and from multiple sources I flow south to Lake Huleh. From there I flow into the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is reported to have preached, calmed storms and walked on my waters. From the Sea of Galilee I descend 65 miles to the Dead Sea, which is so called because it has no outlet.

From my beginnings in the north around the heights of Mount Hermon to my terminus in the Dead Sea I drop 2,380 feet and I have a winding course, making its way nearly 200 miles, approximately twice the actual distance between Mount Hermon and the Dead Sea. Unlike every other river in the world, the majority of my navigation lies below sea level and ends in a body of water, the Dead Sea, which is the lowest lying body of water, other than the oceans, on the face of the earth.

There are four miracles that are associated with my waters that I will speak about today. Please don’t flinch when I say the word, miracles. Miracles don’t have to be acts of God; they can also be events or circumstances that give one a sense of admiring awe, or maybe even a literary devise?

The first incident is found in the book of Second Kings. A man named Naaman, a Captain in the Syrian Army, and a mighty warrior who fought and won many battles was also a leper. Now, a young girl who worked in Naaman’s house was an Israeli slave who spoke of a prophet, one Elisha, who could cure Naaman of his leprosy.

So Naaman went to Samaria where Elisha lived to ask him to rid him of his leprosy. And Elisha wouldn’t even leave his home to see Naaman, he simply sent a servant to tell Naaman to go to the River Jordan and bathe there.

Naaman got angry when he heard this because he knew there were plenty of nice rivers in Syria where he might have bathed, and besides he had traveled far to see this prophet, and he was looking forward to the prophet’s efforts to cleanse him, even if they didn’t work.

Naaman’s own servants had to convince Naaman that since they were already in Israel and the River Jordan was there, what harm would it do him to have a bath.

He dipped himself 7 times into my waters and when he emerged his flesh was again like the flesh of a little child.

The second incident that concerns my holy waters, was recorded in the book of Joshua. After Moses had wandered with the people of Israel in the desert for forty years. Every woman knows why it took them forty years – just like any man Moses wouldn’t stop and ask directions.

Moses died before he could enter the Promised Land, so Joshua was chosen to lead the people across the Jordan River and into the land of milk and honey. But it was the time of harvest, and the banks of the River Jordan were overflowing as they always did at harvest time, so Joshua had the ark of the covenant brought down to the river side and when the ark was carried into my waters, it is reported that I stopped flowing and the people of Israel were allowed to pass over into the land promised them.

The third miraculous thing reported in the Bible concerning me was when Elijah and Elisha were in need of getting on the other side of the River Jordan and Elijah took his cloak from his shoulders and hit my waters with it and again, I dried up, and the two prophets were able to pass on dry land. Shortly after that Elijah was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot. Conveniently, the good prophet dropped his cloak and Elisha picked it up and was able to smite my waters with it again, and pass back over the

Jordan on his way home.

The fourth incident that happened of great spiritual significance was, of course, Jesus’ baptism in my holy waters.

I understand that you’ve heard from John – the one they called the Baptist – in an earlier sermon and it was John who baptized Jesus.

A word about John. He not only baptized his followers in my waters, but he also bathed there, drank my water, and when there was a crowd for baptisms and he couldn’t take a break he relieved himself in those self-same waters. He was not a man of clean habits, but what can you expect from a man who insults his visitors, “You brood of vipers, who warned you of the wrath to come?” and eats bugs, and steals honey from bees?

There has been a great deal written about Jesus? baptism. It has been reported that a dove descended from heaven and lighted on Jesus? head. It has been reported that John declared that this was the one he’d been talking about all along, the one whose sandal he was not worthy to tie. It has been reported that the heavens opened and a the very voice of God spoke saying, “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

I can’t verify any of these happenings because I’m just a river, just passing through, just hurrying on my way, and besides, you know the way things sound to you underwater, that’s the way things sound to me above water.

What I can tell you is that when John baptized Jesus he held him under for an ungodly amount of time. To the eyes of the world it may have looked like a baptism, but to me, the River Jordan, it looked a great deal like John the Baptist was trying to drown Jesus. That would have made sense, Jesus was the new kid on the block when it came to prophets, John’s popularity was waning, surely John knew that Jesus would take his place, and that the followers he’d gathered would eventually go over to the Nazarene. Why do you think that Jesus ran off into the desert right after his baptism? He wanted to get as far away from water, as far away from me, as he possibly could!

Conclusion: Now, I wish to comment on all these extraordinary things that have been recorded in the Bible and that supposedly happened along my banks and in my waters.

First of all those who do not understand story have difficulty with elements of story. Mark Twain was absolutely right when he said, “Why mess up a good story by sticking to the facts?”

Stories are not about facts. Stories are about the weaving of meaning into this life. Stories take what happened and ask, “What if?” Besides as has been proven time and again, even when there are eyewitnesses, their accounts of what happened are varied to the point of seeming to be about different events.

Within psychological circles this is known as the Rashomon Effect. This psychological effect is named after the first Japanese film to bring Akira Kurosawa to the attention of the viewing public of this country. Rashomon, the film, was released in 1950 and received an Oscar for Best Foreign language film in 1951.

Rashomon presents a morally complex and multifacitited story in which different characters tell their versions of the same “factual” events, and although each sounds plausible, and possible, none are the definitive take on what happened that afternoon in the grove of trees as a Samurai and his new wife are accosted by a bandit and the entire affair is witnessed by a woodcutter who is hiding in a grove of trees.

Now, some of you may wonder why I would know of Akira Kurosawa, so I will explain. He was known as “Emperor” for his dictatorial directing style. At one point while directing a film he demanded that a stream that was to be in a shot be redirected to flow in the opposite direction – and so it was!

In the process of telling a visual story, Kurosawa thought the story would best be told if nature were reversed, and for the story he was telling it was reversed. And you say you don’t believe in miracles!?

Things happen in this world, and it is up to us to make sense of them. Meaning is the function of story telling. For the culture and time of Naaman the Syrian it was important for me, River Jordan, to be a place where miracles could happen, even to non-Israelites and so they did.

When Joshua and the Israelites entered the Promised Land that so-called Promised Land belonged to other peoples from other cultures. The Israelites supposedly murdered those people and took their lands. It was important for that particular Israelite culture to know that God was on their side and it was God’s will not their avarice, which was the cause of those supposed genocides. Truth is, they probably intermarried and told these genocidal stories to pretend ethic purity. Hence, the story is told that God dried up the River Jordan so that the battle of Jericho could begin. We all need signs, and stories are places where signs can be inserted.

Sometimes when one prophet takes over the work of another prophet, it seems appropriate that the new prophet should have equal powers with the old, hence the tale of Elijah’s cloak being passed on to Elisha.

And Jesus? baptism what of that? I played such an important part in the story of Israel, that for a prophet to be properly introduced that prophet must come to terms with my holy waters. Besides, Jesus was to be the new Moses, and if Moses had water miracles, then it was paramount that Jesus have water miracles, too, and even better ones. Moses parted the waters, but Jesus walked on water. Did he really walk on water, or was it simply a metaphor of power explained in hyperbole? I think you know the answer.

And do rivers talk? Can the River Jordan preach?

I suggest that the next time you’re near a body of moving water, you sit facing the water and listen. Sit long and quiet, and you will hear the whispers, the overtones, the shouts and the murmurs of the stream that you are making conscious. Listen carefully, for it is up to you to tell the story of what the river of your life is disclosing.