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Brian Ferguson
December 21, 2008
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.
Reading –
For So The Children Come
by Sophia Lyon Fahs
For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
born of the seed of man and woman.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show
where to find the babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night
Fathers and mothers–
sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, ‘Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?’
Each night a child is born is a holy night–
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.
Prayer
These are the words of Eusebius, the 3rd Century Christian Bishop
May I be no one’s enemy and may I be the friend of that which is eternal and abides.
May I wish for every person’s happiness and envy none.
May I never rejoice in the ill fortune of one who has wronged me.
May I, to the extent of my power, give needful help to all who are in want.
May I never fail a friend.
May I respect myself.
May I always keep tame that which rages within me.
May I accustom myself to be gentle and never be angry with others because of circumstances.
May I know good people and follow in their footsteps.
Amen
Reading
“Christ Climbed Down”
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candy canes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck crches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody’s imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
through a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30 with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary’s womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody’s anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings
Sermon – Brian Ferguson
Here we are four days before Christmas and we are in the aftermath of a divisive church conflict regarding the dismissal of our minister. Everyone seems to be hurting.
I know I am moving between emotions of sadness, anger, and confusion. It is not a good place to be. The future looks uncertain, many are disillusioned about our church community, and most of us are still trying to make sense of what just happened over the last month. Christmas time is where the dominant religious culture and dominant secular culture are telling us is a time of joy and celebration. I am not feeling much joy and celebration right now.
Christmas is often a time when we Unitarian Universalists turn to our Christian roots. There is a certain irony to this since for most Christians, Easter has a far greater religious significance than Christmas. Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus which demonstrates the divinity of Jesus. Christmas on the hand is very much a story about the humanity of Jesus since it is a celebration of his birth and the hope his birth symbolizes. I am feeling all too human right now and the powerlessness that involves. Hope is something which would be helpful at this time.
The religious message of hope often gets lost amidst the secular aspects of Christmas that the poem I read earlier somewhat cynically described – “the tinsel Christmas trees, the plastic babe in a manger, and the North Pole saint in a red flannel suit with a fake white beard.” Not much sign of hope there. These images of Christmas are so familiar to us from television, shopping malls, and the front yard of our neighbors – or perhaps if we are honest even our own front yards – yes confession time in the UU church. I warned you we would be going back to our Christian roots.
Despite the rampant commercialization of Christmas there is an important religious message to some Christians and it is perhaps the most important aspect of our Christian heritage that we Unitarian Universalists continue to embrace. That is the idea of the incarnation. The divine embodied in flesh is the literal meaning. Incarnation is the idea of the divine being active in the material world in human form. In Christianity this figure was Jesus Christ who came to communicate a message of salvation to people therefore took human form.
Our Unitarian and Universalist ancestors embraced the idea of incarnation very seriously and reached some radical conclusions. Incarnation to them meant our highest ideals are embodied into our human form and become an active presence in our world through our own actions. The 19th Century Unitarian William Ellery Channing says “Jesus came, not only to teach with his lips, but to be a living manifestation of his religion – to be, in an important sense, the religion itself. Christianity is a living, embodied religion. It is example and action” This is a call to us to live out our values actively in our lives – to be the incarnation of our values in our world.
Thinking of Jesus in these terms helps me understand the Christian idea of the Church as the Body of Christ. This term can be confusing but I find it helpful in thinking about our religious community being infused and guided by high ideals and moral values. The mission statement of our church reads: “As an inclusive religious and spiritual community, we support each individual’s search for meaning and purpose, and join together to help create a world filled with compassion and love.” Just as some believe that spiritual energy brings alive the material body of a person, our religious community is brought alive by the high spiritual ideas and morals of our mission. Without such ideas we are just a physical building and social group not a church.
In thinking of our church here in Austin as a body it is fair to say our particular body right now is feeling battered, bruised, and broken. It is difficult to find the infusion of high spiritual ideals as we assess where we are as a community. In our Unitarian Universalist tradition, the local congregation has the power to call and dismiss a minister. There is no hierarchical power structure that imposes ministers on congregations as in some religions. The right of a congregation to call any minister of their choosing is a great strength of our movement and has allowed us to be the first religion to call women, gay, and transgender ministers. This is an aspect of our history that we are rightly very proud of. The shadow side of this congregational power is the conflict and divisiveness that can occur within a congregation around the dismissal of a minister. Sadly, this latter case has been so clearly demonstrated to us in the last few weeks.
We are in a time of great pain, uncertainty, and confusion as a religious community. We have voted to dismiss our senior minister, and our future is uncertain. There is pain about the loss of our minister, pain about the process leading up to the vote, and pain about the divisions in our community. I personally have a pain that is beyond the disappointment of losing a colleague and supervisor. I have a pain that is an injury of the soul. My spiritual wound is due to our religious community losing touch with the core elements of our mission such as compassion and love in the turmoil of the last few weeks. I look around our community and see great hurt amongst people on all sides of the vote. I am also pained as valued members of our community leave wounded by the events of recent weeks.
I heard and read statements about the senior minister and members of the board of trustees that I found offensive and disrespectful, and believe such statements should have had no place in any community let alone a religious one. This pained me deeply. We have a right to free speech and to disagreement, in fact they are at the core of our Liberal Religious movement, but we also have a responsibility to exercise those rights respectfully and for the greater good of our community. The value of the inherent worth and dignity of every person is not a value that is turned on at our convenience. Such values are principles we are called to follow and may be most important when we engage with those who we are in disagreement with.
Some people who supported dismissal told me that they feel they now have their church back. Others who wished to retain the minister say they feel they have lost their church and plan to leave our community. I would remind both groups an important yet often unrecognized aspect of our Liberal Religious Tradition – You only lose this church if you choose to leave it. The church as a community is still here and hopefully always will be. We do not exclude people because of how they voted, what they believe, or have creeds you must conform to before you can join.
For those who have come back because they feel they have their church back I caution them that is a different church today than the one they recall from their past. Churches like physical bodies are organic institutions which change over time as new people come in, bringing their energy and vitality forever changing our community. This is a very good thing. For those who feel they have recently lost their church, it is true the church they experienced before the conflict is no longer with us. It is said that forgiveness is the giving up of any hope of a better past. I would suggest that the church of the past for all of us is gone. We cannot unring the bell.
We must attempt to heal our present wounds and begin envisioning what church we want to be in the future. To begin healing we must understand the mistakes we made in the past and why recent events have caused so much hurt in our community. I sympathize with the frustration and sadness that leads people to want to leave a church. We have high expectations of people in our religious community, be they our minister, board members, committee chairs, office staff, other members, or even our ministerial intern. We are all human and often fail to live up to the values as we would wish to.
When wounded in our lives, many of us turn to our religious community for healing. When a part of our religious community is the cause of our wounds then we struggle to believe our church can be a part of our healing. I believe a spiritual injury needs spiritual healing. Perhaps the healing can happen in another religious community but I would suggest the healing might be more whole, more complete if it occurs within the religious community that caused the injury?
The great 16th Century Unitarian Francis David said “We do not need to think alike to love alike.” We hear these words so often in our Unitarian Universalist churches that the profoundness of them can become lost.
These words are so much easier said than acted upon. In the recent turmoil in our church, these words occurred to me often but sadly too often in the violation rather than the observance of the sentiment. We claim that we wish a diversity of opinions and then when we disagree on a major issue we seem to quickly fall out of right relationship with each other. Perhaps the problem is many of us join our movement because “we want to be around people who think like we do.” When a point of disagreement comes up in our community then our relationship with each other can quickly sour and we are at a loss about how to repair it.
As most of us know from our most intimate relationships, a relationship based on love is no guarantee of agreement on all things and avoidance of conflict. Apologies to any new lovers out there! A relationship based on love is a commitment to stay in relationship and work out the difficulties in a mutually beneficial way if possible.
Both our religious connection to our church and our intimate relationships can grow stronger as we work through our differences and conflicts. Being around people who have the same opinions as us is certainly comfortable and supportive but only limited growth can occur. I believe we grow more when we are in community with people who challenge us and are willing to stay in relationship with us as we differ in our thoughts. We can all grow spiritually through this challenge.
One of our duties as members of this religious community is to hold each other accountable for our actions, values and opinions by calling us to embody these values in our actions. I believe Davidson attempted to hold us accountable to these high ideals through his sermons. I believe the board thought they were acting to hold ministerial leadership accountable to our higher values. Many members of our congregation attempted to hold our leadership accountable to values of fairness and openness in recent weeks. These were all good aspects of what happened in the last few weeks.
I believe the failure of our community in the last few weeks is where we fell out of love, respect, and compassion with those we disagree with or were in conflict with. We stopped living our mission by failing to act with compassion and love towards those we disagreed with. Reasonable people can disagree on issues, and disagreeing respectfully is possible. A chasm developed between groups within us where listening stopped as the voices became louder.
There was a dehumanizing of people on all sides of this issue that was heartbreaking for me to witness. I also feel complicit in this since I did too little to stop it. I regret my failure not to do enough to address the dehumanizing words and actions I witnessed on all sides. For example I was talking to a ministerial colleague from another church yesterday who was disgusted by us having many of the documents available through our public website. I too was troubled by this but did not address it Damage was done not only to our church but our movement.
We all probably can think of areas we should have address or things we did differently. Our views became entrenched which limited our imagination to see a greater range of possibilities for the process and how our actions impacted others. I think much of our pain is that we know in our hearts we could have done so much better.
To return to the earlier analogy of the Church as a body: prior to the board’s request for Davidson’s dismissal, a large portion of this community saw our church body as healthy, vibrant, and happy. The request for dismissal and build-up to the congregational meeting showed that much of the body of religious community was injured and in pain. There was a disappointment for many of us that we were unaware of the true feelings of our friends and fellow members of our own religious community. This painful realization that what we thought was a community of health was really a community of brokenness and this was a shock to many.
In looking at how we heal and move forward, I am trying to find sources of hope. One hope I find is that we were not failed by our values but our failure to live up to our values. We often failed to stay in relationship with those we disagree with – to love those that did not think like us.
I have had people on all sides of the issues talk to me trying to find meaning in what happened and seeking to understand their own pain and the pain of others. An honest seeking to understand the pain of others is a sign of hope. The need to be in fellowship with those who share our view is understandable and may be needed in providing emotional support.
The beginning of healing in our community I believe begins with each of us getting together with those having differing opinions and listening to them. Not trying to argue our point or find reasons to dismiss what they are saying, but listening to them to understand why others have the feelings they do. Hopefully if we listen to them they may reciprocate by listening to us. We will hear why people with similar information as us believed, acted, and reached conclusions very different from our own.
Perhaps we may understand most of us were acting in what we believed to be the common good for our religious community. Out of this may grow that seed of respect and though this is not quite the same as loving those who think differently from us, it has the potential to grow there. And at least we will be back in right relationship with others and moving forward. I wish us all well on this difficult journey and hope that we can all be a part of the important work we need to do. As we move towards the Christmas holiday and look forward to our future together may the following words of Howard Thurman hold all of us with love:
When the song of angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the family,
to make music in the heart.
May we all find the music we need for our hearts at this time and through our actions may we be the incarnation of our highest values of love and compassion in this world. And in doing so let us do the healing, rebuilding, and bringing of peace that our community and our world desperately needs.
———————
Channing, William Ellery, The Imitablness of Christ’s Character: The Works of William Ellery Channing Vol.IV (Boston, MA: American Unitarian Association, 1903) p.135
