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Davidson Loehr and Cathy Harrington

8 June 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

(On the cover of the orders of service appeared a drawing and poem by the Danish poet Piet Hein, which serves as a leit-motif in the sermon. The poem is called “Circumscripture.” The drawing is of a priest in long flowing robe walking along with a glowing halo hovering around his head a little below eye level.

The poem says:

“As pastor X steps out of bed

 is really his horizon.”)

Intro

We decided to try something very different today. Cathy’s ministerial student internship was completed the end of May. And while she’ll be here through July, preaching several more times, she is now here as our summer minister. Her student days here are over.

During this year, we have had a lot of communication behind the scenes, about ministry, religion, preaching, all the things involved in the business of being a liberal minister. These interchanges have all happened behind the scenes, things you didn’t see or hear. We have met for about an hour a week of one-on-one supervision, but most of our interchanges have happened by e-mail.

Some of them have been pretty heated. We have never attacked the other person, but have often disagreed about important issues, and sometimes it’s been pretty heated.

Cathy, shockingly, was rude enough to keep all these e-mails! And when she wrote her final theological reflection paper for her seminary a couple weeks ago, she showed me some of these e-mails – there are well over thirty pages of them. She put a lot of them in her final paper, which she shared with her classmates. And we decided there were some good things in these behind-the-scenes exchanges that might make a good sermon, and that would have a lot of topics to which many of you could relate from your own lives.

So we will bring you – not the whole thirty pages, thankfully – but some excerpts from the discussions about religion and ministry that have been going on since last August, behind the scenes.

PRAYER

To give thanks is to have needed, and to have received, a gift for which we are too grateful to remain silent.

To give thanks is to acknowledge that we have been given something precious that we did not earn.

To give thanks is to use all five of our senses, but in new ways:

It is to see the invisible things around us, and to rejoice in them:

like the glow of warmth from those who care for us,

the sparkle of laughter and love which surprise us with joy,

or the glimpse of a fuller life, and a better world.

To give thanks is to hear the silent things, and to learn their melodies by heart:

like the quiet understanding of friends,

or the sound of caring

To give thanks is to smell of gratitude,

or even to reek of it!

— it is to taste the immediate,

seasoned with a dash of the infinite.

To give thanks is to touch the deep and undoubtable presence of things which could not possibly exist:

it is like grasping the most hopeful of possibilities,

or feeling life itself passing through us, and blessing us as it passes,

or holding and being held by memories still warm to the touch.

To give thanks is to have learned how to say YES to life, in all the languages of the heart, mind, body and spirit. And more: it is finally to hear the YES of life, a YES which can unite all the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings of life itself into you, into me, into each of us.

A medieval theologian named Meister Eckhart once wrote that if the only prayer we ever say in thank you, it will be sufficient. Let us give thanks for the manifold miracles of our lives. Amen.

Sermon

Cathy:

My internship in Austin has been all that it should be, and then some. I was told that internships should be kind of like the “flowering” of a minister, and in my case it has not been without some painful pruning and “heading” (you know, when you pinch off blossoms so the plant can grow larger. It seems so cruel but necessary for growth.) I can still remember how nervous I was when I started in August, the sleepless nights and debilitating doubts. What was I thinking accepting an internship in this huge church with this reputedly brilliant intellectual as my supervisor?

I wanted my mentor to be someone with a Ph.D. in religion because I needed to prove to myself (and the Ministerial Fellowship Committee) that I could cut the muster. If I wasn’t “enough” for a large congregation of highly (over) educated UUs, then I wanted to know ASAP.

Davidson had read some of my papers and sermons before offering me the internship and he was aware of my beliefs, and that I considered myself a UU Christian. He didn’t seem to think there would be a problem, in spite of the largely humanist population at First UU. It was with anticipation and no shortage of anxiety that I made the1800 mile move, pulling that UHaul trailer to Austin.

My first couple of weeks were so daunting that I wondered if I would make it. And August was so HOT in Texas! I had meetings almost every night with this committee and that committee, and Davidson asked for a schedule of sermon topics through December. The adjustment of moving and missing my friends and school were harder than I anticipated and a slew of mishaps such a car accident that wasn’t my fault, a dead battery, and a major mistake in an automatic deposit in my checking account put me $1000 in arrears with the bank, and it was so HOT ! How do these people live like this?

It felt like my life was spinning out of control and I had somehow landed in a Woody Allen movie.

My first meeting to plan sermon topics with Andrea and Davidson was so intimidating that it left me feeling like my mind was nothing more than a huge void. They both seemed energized and creatively in sync while I sat on the sidelines wondering what the hell I was thinking putting myself out there as a minister.

Fortunately, the congregation went out of their way to make me feel at home and welcome. Thank goodness, the people in this church are so friendly and nice.

Davidson:

After agreeing to be a mentor for a ministerial intern, I wondered, What have I got myself in for? This is a big responsibility. We have a year in which this woman is trusting us to help her prepare as a liberal religious minister, to help fill in the gaps that seminary educations always leave. It’s intimidating.

I’m not worried about the church. It’s a good healthy church, the people here will be good to and for her. I’m worried about me. How do I help teach someone what I think she needs to know about religion in a year? Can this be done? The tendency in seminaries and in most of our society is to act as though religion is just whatever you happen to believe, as though there were no deeper subject matter. It isn’t true, of course. There are fervently-held beliefs that are foolish, self-absorbed, unwise or unhealthy. Some beliefs are good, some are bad. Good religion is about good beliefs, and ministers are supposed to know the difference.

I want to help Cathy find her own personal authority, which comes from her own authenticity, and help her understand that religious jargon isn’t to be trusted unless we can also explain in ordinary language what we mean by these loaded words.

But there is so much else to cover: weddings, memorial services, creating an attitude of seriousness and worship, understanding some of the politics of churches, and budgets, and trying to manage the time so you still have space for a personal life. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten myself in for, and I don’t want to fail. If I’m going to do this, I want to do it well.

Cathy:

I had written three new sermons and preached four times and had only been on the job for six weeks! Writing two newsletter columns a month and coming up with sermon blurbs before the sermon is even written was challenging, but I would have to say that my biggest challenge occurred at the Sunday Night Live service when my prayer and then my sermon were preceded by a very talented belly dancer. Trying to create a sacred space after a belly dancer was NOT an easy task. What on earth had I gotten myself into?

I was scheduled to preach all three services on October 13, the evening service Oct 27, and preach in two area UU churches in November and share the pulpit with Davidson on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. In December I was scheduled to preach three times and do both Christmas Eve services with Davidson. Add Evensong, quilting group, baking classes, pastoral care, committee meetings… Whew! I’ll either be a veteran when this is over or dead. Goodness. Did I say I wanted to be a parish minister?

My first few sermons were fairly well received. Nobody threw stones or rotten tomatoes, anyway. I talked about my background in Christian Science, and my reasons for leaving the religion of my childhood, and my past careers as a hairdresser and a baker. But, when I presented my sermon called Rediscovering Prayer, I revealed that I think of myself as a Unitarian Universalist Christian. As a result of that sermon I received several calls and emails from church members interested in talking more about UU Christianity. I decided it would be a good idea to form a group to explore this together and so I wrote a blurb for the newsletter and then emailed Davidson to tell him my plans.

“I’m going to start a UU Christian Group at church, do you think I’ll be tarred and feathered?”

Well, yes, actually as it turned out. By Davidson. He went ballistic. Said it was the flakiest idea I’d had yet. He acted like it was a disease he didn’t want spread in his church. He asked me if I thought I was more spiritually sensitive than the 600+ members of this church who would not want Christian language or structure!

“Where is your authority for this?”

“We can talk about this, Cathy, but you won’t win this argument.”

I wrote back, “What? Where did that come from? I never said that. Damn it, Davidson, you insulted me.”

“Good grief, I don’t want to win this one.

“Boy, this is proof certain that Unitarians are least tolerant of Christians. We are supposed to be inclusive in this denomination. I told you that you might want to send me packing to one of those liberal Christian churches. I can call the group something else, jeez.”

“NO,” he wrote back, “You are going to examine your beliefs to a degree I don’t think you’ve been forced to.” Then he used an analogy to studying the guitar and how Klondike is changing my technique. Forcing me to pay attention to aspects of the music and my hand and finger positions in ways I had never been asked to do. I had to give up all of my favorite pieces and begin again.

My goodness, how on earth did I end up with two Ph.D. “task masters” for mentors? Great, just great! This is going to be a very long year.

Behind the scenes, intense emails are flying. I argued, “My myth, my story has been Jesus all my life. Why do we have to throw him away? Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom of God is what I strive for in my life. Jesus was a teacher of wisdom. His parables and aphorisms are insightful and evocative. I’m tired of having to defend myself for choosing to follow Jesus, for calling myself a Christian.”

I often closed my emails, to soften things a bit, Your humble student.

Davidson wrote back, “Why Jesus? Why not Buddha or Socrates?”

You know, I told him, the Buddha abandoned his wife and child to go off and become enlightened. How enlightened is that? I think I prefer Jesus.

So he writes back, “The Buddha would have made a lousy father, Cathy, why wish that on any kid.”

I obviously can’t win this argument.

Then he throws in, “It’s understandable that as a single mother who her worked her butt off, you’d carry this grudge, but it might be time to shelve it? Just a thought.”

“If you want to yell and vent,” he says, “we can make time for that.”

“That’s pretty hard to do over email,” I tell him, ” But, I will always tell you when you make me angry or insult me. This time you did by accusing me of arrogance, ignorance, and self-righteousness. I didn’t deserve that.”

“Keep reacting honestly, Cathy, you don’t have to be nice, you have to be real. Arrogance, ignorance, and self-righteousness? Well, don’t ever be sure they don’t fit. I’m speaking to you, me, and everyone. I see you wanting to exalt your unexamined beliefs. I ask on what authority? What IS the authority for your beliefs? That’s an important question, and we need to know how to answer it.”

“So much stuff in UU churches stops at the lower level, where people want to take sides for theism or atheism. What a waste of time! Get beyond that and talk about what in life is deeply true and life giving, don’t let the idioms of expression distract you, Cathy.”

Hmmm…

Davidson:

It’s so important for preachers to know that religious words are idioms of expression, not the names of supernatural things. Now that I’ve talked with her and heard her preach, I think I want to work on two things with Cathy this year. One is just craft, how to put a sermon together with a beginning, a theme and development, and a good ending. It’s like music in that way. Little things like articulation mean a lot. Unless we enunciate clearly, people who don’t hear well won’t be able to understand us. It’s a matter of technique, but also a matter of respect for those who have honored us with their presence and trust. She also has trouble writing endings. I’ll read through the drafts of her sermons and think “This is a fine sermon, but don’t blow the ending, don’t just end it in mid-air.” At first, I wrote a lot of her endings. Sermons can end in different ways, but they are bringing a fairly intimate relationship with a congregation to a close for a week, so they need some care. I don’t know why she has such trouble writing endings. Maybe she doesn’t like for things to end.

I’m also getting to learn more about her own religious beliefs, a combination of very spiritual Christian Science teachings with some Jesus and God stories thrown in. She calls herself a Christian. I don’t know what she means by that. I don’t think she does, either. But if she’s going to use the word in a liberal pulpit, it’s her job to be clear about it, so anyone who’s listening can understand her.

It’s certainly an odd collection of beliefs she is labeling “Christian”! A Jesus without miracles, who didn’t die for anyone’s sins, a religion without a heaven or hell, with a God that is not a being but is a series of poetic and symbolic things like love, truth, mind and the rest. Throughout most of Christian history, 99% of Christians would have burned her at the stake for these beliefs. I don’t think “Christian” describes her beliefs, and don’t think she knows what she means by words like Jesus, Christ, God and the rest.

She wrote me last October that she wanted to start a “UU Christian” group at church, and she got angry and hurt when I told her it was a flaky idea and she couldn’t do it because she doesn’t know what those words mean. Then she wrote “call me crazy, but I love Jesus.” That makes me nuts. She doesn’t love Jesus. Jesus is dead. She loves something else and I want her to know what it is.

What I think she loves is a picture of life lived in simple and direct service to others, and she loves the parts of the Jesus tradition that tell stories about simple and direct service to others, like the foot-washing story she likes so much. But if she can say it that way, then everyone in the room can understand her, including those who have no particular interest in Jesus.

When preachers wrap themselves in religious words like God, Christ, Buddha, Allah, sin, salvation, revelation, prophecy and the rest of it, the aura around those words can make us feel very special. It creates a kind of halo around us. It feels marvelous to use such powerful words, even if we don’t know what we mean by them. Think about it. You have your opinions, we speak for God’s opinions. You speak of stocks and bonds, we speak of salvation. Ministers can get dipped in this vocabulary of special and vague words so far that they actually think they’re living in and speaking from that so-called eternal world. You better believe that creates a sense of a halo!

But that halo is a trap, for it becomes our horizon – like the cartoon and poem on the cover of your order of service. When people are allowed to use religious language they don’t understand, they don’t so much communicate meanings as they cast a kind of spell over themselves and others. Using those special words can become addictive, can permanently blind you. I know ministers who have been in this business for forty years who can not tell you what they believe if they can’t use words like God, but they can’t tell you what they mean by those words either. That’s not an integrated belief. It isn’t a belief at all. It’s more like an unexamined pious habit that some believers, and some ministers, use to mesmerize themselves. It can’t help us become more whole, it only gets us into a certain kind of club, where people talk like that, and have agreed not to ask what on earth those words mean. That’s not what liberal religion, or any honest religion, is about.

It’s like taking medications. We users don’t have to know the meaning or effects of words like insulin, valium, ritalin, codein, or all the rest of them. But the professionals who give those things to us had better know their meanings and their effects, or they are being unprofessional and we are at risk of being abused. In that way, religion is like medicine. If ministers don’t know what such powerful words mean, we shouldn’t be allowed to use them. We’re not paid to cast spells, we’re paid to help people understand their own lives in light of the kind of insights the best religions have always offered.

This sounds so academic, so intellectual, and it is. But that’s my own bias, my own halo – and if I’m not careful, my own horizon. And the good and bad news is that my bias, my limitations, are going to be part of Cathy’s internship experience. She’s stuck with both my gifts and my blindnesses. I don’t apologize for them. We don’t need to be perfect, we need to be human. That’s enough. And part of my approach to life is that I think we need to know what we believe before we can ask whether it is worth believing, and worth prescribing to others.

Cathy already has everything she needs to be a very good minister. She’s as intelligent, as perceptive, as loving as anyone needs to be, and has more common sense than most. But too many ministers, even Unitarians, think that preaching should be done only in terms of their personal beliefs, and that it is somehow rude to question anyone else’s beliefs – as though our unexamined beliefs deserved respect. Nonsense! People deserve respect, beliefs have to earn it.

Cathy:

I can’t tell you what it was like to send a sermon to Davidson for approval late on a Saturday night and have his response be, “About that ending, or lack thereof. But the rest is fine, just fine.”

“Davidson, you need to add “fine” to the list of words not to use when speaking to a very tired woman with a hormone imbalance.”

What is the authority for my belief? A lifetime of learning how to live and love, experiences of grace and transformation when I thought I wouldn’t survive, and ten months of dueling with this Wise Old Theologian.

Davidson was relentless, patient (mostly), and generous with his time and tutoring. I am beginning to understand. What he is talking about is what Paul Tillich referred to as “the ground of all being.” This is just a way of expressing what is deeply true and permanent about life.

“God” isn’t a big enough word. No single religion can provide adequate or enduring idioms of expression that can define or express the Ultimate Concern.

Poetry, the myths, great art and music created over the centuries hold but a fragment of the permanent. Nothing can contain all that is enduringly true about life. I still contend that Jesus was one of the few human beings who walked the earth that understood this core truth. His teachings are simple and pure and we don’t have to discard them.

“Jesus had been as deeply and remarkably human as anyone his disciples had ever known; The two things-his profound humanity, and his intense closeness to God-were bound together inextricably, and at the heart of the mystery of that bond was love, a light that never went out. [1]

Jesus was connected to the rhythm of restoration and hope that flows from the core of Ultimate Reality and washes over us when we willingly open our hearts or, at times when life crack us wide open. In those moments of pain, we are most receptive to this quenching mist and then courage, compassion, justice, and wholeness are all possible. This is what Jesus tried to teach, what he hoped for humanity.

Davidson:

There: did you hear that? You understood every word she said. The words were true, they were anchored in life lived with depth and awareness. She was absolutely clear about what she believed and how it was connected to life.

And there was more to it than just truth and clarity. There was also a lot of poetry there: poetry that spoke from the heart of life, and everyone hear both heard it and felt it.

There was also an edge to it, a very distinctive kind of strength and power, her own very strong personality coming through and tying her insights and her poetry together in a kind of prophetic voice that everyone here could understand and relate to. Folks, it doesn’t get much better than that. That’s preaching, and it’s good preaching. You could hear it in the pulpit of almost any church, and know you had heard words of truth, depth, passion and power. That’s about as good as it gets.

I think I first saw all these parts come together in the Easter service we did together. It was good. We dealt with the Christian Easter story from our very different directions. Two different beliefs, each expressed clearly. I like having a second minister with beliefs very different from mine, it makes the tent bigger. Afterwards, people complemented us on our “tag team” service. On Easter, Cathy didn’t seem like a student. She seemed like a colleague. What a perfect day for the ending of an old role and the birth of a new one! I think her internship is about over.

We’ll always differ on some of our beliefs, but it doesn’t matter. I think she’s using her religious language now, rather than being used by it, and everyone can understand what she’s saying. Her endings are getting better, too.

OK, I think we’re done. Say Amen, Cathy.

Cathy:

No, Davidson, your not-so-humble student has more to say!

This is my new language for the ground of all being, the Rhythm of Restoration and Hope. This is how I refer to God these days. God is love, as I have said before, but God is so much more than that.

My guitar lesson this week was devoted largely to understanding rhythm. Klondike, without knowing it, gave me a new metaphor. When I complained, “I don’t think I have any rhythm, he said, “Of course you have rhythm, everybody has rhythm, otherwise they would walk like this. And he demonstrated what no rhythm would look like. It looked ridiculous, but I understood.

“You think you don’t have rhythm because you aren’t paying attention to it. You must be intentional, settle into your body, and feel yourself move with the beat. A conductor will always cue the orchestra with the beat, and they don’t begin until they have had that moment of getting in sync with the rhythm.”

The sacred center of all being surrounds us in mystery and pulsates with the rhythm of life-giving restoration and hope. It is up to us to take the time to get in sync with this life-sustaining tempo. Meditation, prayer, or chants are the tuning forks or metronomes that can usher in those moments of grace when we experience connectedness that will quench our spirits and offer transcendence.

Yes, rhythm is natural. Everything we need has been given to us. The catch is that we must pay attention to the “conductor.” It is necessary to align ourselves with the sacred center in which we have our being.

And then we must carefully listen. Listen with our hearts and minds to the rhythms of restoration and hope that we might dare to dance with our common dreams of a more perfect world.

This is what I believe.

OK, Davidson, now you can say “Amen,” and try not to blow the ending!

Davidson:

I’m quitting while we’re ahead. Amen.

—————

[1] Bawer, Bruce. Stealing Jesus. New York, NY. Three Rivers Press. 1997. P. 44-45.

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Davidson Loehr

Cathy Harrington

20 April 2003

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button below.

THE STORIES OF EASTER: Four Gospel Easter Stories

Cathy Harrington

The four gospel versions of Easter morning are very different. All four were compiled from stories that began as an oral tradition during the first decades following the death of Jesus. The first three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels because they “view together” the events of Jesus’ life. They shared common sources and it is apparent that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a “general outline”. The fact that four very different Easter stories were placed in the canon is sufficient evidence that these gospel accounts were not meant to be historical. Based on events, maybe, but as the stories were told over and over with different viewpoints, they grew and changed and they were naturally embellished. The intent of four different stories is to convey to the reader the impact that Jesus’ life and death had on his disciples, and to open the reader’s heart to the possibility of going deeper than an intellectual or literal understanding.

Something extraordinary happened. How was it that the followers of Jesus, who were portrayed in all four gospels as being rather stupid and clumsy, as just “not getting it” or even worse as cowards when they fled the crucifixion and deserted their master. How did these disciples begin again and come to a new understanding of the message of their beloved Teacher?

This is the miracle of new life that springs out of the resurrection. As liberal theologians have said for at least two centuries, the resurrection happened in the mind of the believers, not the body of Jesus.

The good news is that these stories don’t have to be thrown away. These ancient stories carry within them a symbolic message of hope, as do stories of Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, or Krishna. The kingdom of God is within us and around us, we simply don’t see it. Like the disciples of Jesus, we just don’t get it. It has been accurately observed that the patron saint of the Unitarian Universalists, if we had one, would be Doubting Thomas.

I invite you to open your hearts and minds to the possibility of hearing the Easter stories in a new way, as if you have come to hear “the good news” for the first time. We’ll begin with Easter story from the gospel of Mark, the earliest and the shortest gospel.

The First Easter Story

After the crucifixion and death of Jesus, the gospel of Mark reveals that the body of Jesus was taken by the man named Joseph, who wrapped him in a linen cloth and laid his body in a tomb that had been hewn out of rock. He then rolled a stone against the opening of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where the body was laid. Sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday.

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome brought spices so that they might go and anoint the body of Jesus. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb, worrying about who will roll away the huge stone.

But when they looked up, they saw the stone had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”

And once the women got outside, they ran away from the tomb, because great fear and excitement got the better of them. And they didn’t breath a word of it to anyone: talk about terrified.[1]

“A proclamation of the good news (a gospel) that ends with the women saying “nothing to anyone, because they were afraid,” is troubling.”[2]

Matthew’s story of the empty tomb is significantly different. Pilate ordered soldiers to guard the tomb to be sure that the disciples didn’t steal the body because Jesus had told them in three days he would be raised up, and Pilate feared they would tell everyone that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and the last deception would be far worse than the first. Matthew included in his story divine intervention in order to frustrate the hostile plot, in the form of a great earthquake; and an angel descending like lightening, as he rolled back the stone. The guards trembled and were struck with fear like dead men. And the angel’s message to the women that Jesus had risen was to run with both fear and joy to tell the disciples. Jesus himself appears to them. And the finale comes when Jesus appears to the Eleven on a mountain in Galilee.”[3] In the final verse, after commissioning the disciples to make followers of all people, Jesus tells them, “I am with you all days until the end of the age.”

Luke tactfully expresses dissatisfaction with the previous narratives about Jesus and implies his gospel will set the record straight.”[4] “Although Luke follows Mark’s empty tomb story, he greatly modifies it, adding clarifications, such as the dramatic question, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

“He deviates from Mark’s indication that the risen Jesus would appear in Galilee, and concentrates his three appearance scenes around Jerusalem, the city that symbolizes Judaism. Luke is particularly insistent on the proof of Jesus’ appearance, for his Jesus eats food and affirms that he has flesh and bones. The final appearance ends with an ascension, as Jesus is carried up to heaven after blessing the disciples.”[5]

Exclusive to Luke is the appearance on the road to Emmaus, when the disciples meet Jesus on the road and don’t recognize him until he breaks bread with them.

This scene has particular significance in preparing for the Eucharistic breaking of bread in Christianity.[6]

And finally, we come to John, the last gospel written. The Gospel of John is dramatically different from the synoptic gospels. The focus is on the divinity of Jesus. The later Christian creeds were based on the theological language of John’s gospel much more than that of the synoptic gospels. The words of the Johannine Jesus are often ambiguous-even deliberately confusing his listeners, conveying two levels of meaning at once.” This is important in understanding that this symbolic gospel was never meant to be taken literally.

In John, Mary sees two angels at the tomb dressed in white and they ask why she is weeping and she responds, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. He speaks to her and she mistakes him for the gardener !

Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!”

Then Jesus stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin) one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

The story ends with this statement of purpose by the author:

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Davidson Loehr

No matter how we sugar-coat it, the Easter stories are harder for most of us to give a fair hearing to than myths from a dozen other religions that aren’t so familiar. It’s easier for us to hear stories about how the earth rests on the back of an elephant, which rests on the back of a giant tortoise, which rests on an infinite line of tortoises, all the way down. Because we know they don’t really mean it literally.

In the Science and Religion class I’m teaching here now, I’ve talked about learning to hear religious myths at three different levels, which we’re calling A, B and C.

Level A is the superficial level, where everything is just taken literally, as though these were stories about elephants and turtles, or a dead man who came back to life and walked with his friends, who couldn’t recognize a man they’d just seen three days before. Taken literally, they don’t make any sense at all.

Level B is the liberal rather than the literal reading, where we understand these are stories written in the language of poetry, symbols and metaphors, that the stories are never about supernatural things, but always about being opened to greater depths of understanding here and now. That’s easy to do with the elephants, harder to do with the stories about Jesus because they were told as though they were to be taken literally, even though most of the men who wrote the Bible kept saying not to take them that way.

And level C is very advanced, and is not intellectual at all. That’s where we see that these aren’t stories just to be understood, but to be embodied. They are meant to change us.

But even at level B, what are we to do with these Easter stories? Twenty centuries of liberal Christian thinkers have told us that we must not pretend they are meant to be taken literally.

Still, it’s hard to hear them fresh, when we’ve spent so many years hearing them taught as incredible supernatural tales. We’ve included a hymn in this service that will push the comfort zone of many, probably including me, because it is hard to hear these myths with fresh ears (“Jesus Christ is Risen Today”). This Easter, Cathy and I decided we would try, and would ask you to try with us, to hear the liberal message hidden beneath these old literal stories.

So we revisit some of the stories of Easter again, to see if we can hear them not at level A, but as stories that take place at levels B and C, within you and me. Taken literally, they’re only Christian stories, and not very interesting ones at that. But at the deeper levels, they are human stories, even universal stories, with roots in every human soul that has learned how to listen. So this is a test, to see if we can hear the Easter message without getting distracted by the mere miracles.

Prayer

(by Cathy Harrington)

Will I recognize you, O Lord, in broken bread, in realities harsh,

 and dreams that remain only dreams?

 At those moments when terror fills my heart,

 Touch the scars of lost hope,

 then shattered spirits will be healed;

 for I too, hold bread to break the grace of each day.

 Help me to walk with strangers, to allow them to unfold the good news of life; to cradle another’s pain in my heart;

 to feed the hunger of unmet needs.

 I walk to Emmaus, again and again,

 trusting that you will join me on the journey.

 With you as companion and guide, I too, will become a giver of grace. Amen.

SERMONS

“The ABC’s of Easter”

Davidson Loehr:

My take on Easter is a lot more philosophical than Cathy’s, because I’ve never been a Christian, and find it harder to get inside some of these stories than the myths of other religions. I chose that hymn we just sang (“Jesus Christ is Risen Today”) partly as a challenge to myself, to see if I could hear those words in another way. But the truth is, that while I liked singing it, I mostly just tuned the words out.

For me, Easter and Christmas are the same story. They’re both about the birth of the sacred in our lives, new life for old, the insistence that though death is real, it isn’t the final answer.

I can find that message in the stories of Jesus’ resurrection, but for me that’s always seemed a stretch, and I’ve preferred the other Easter stories, the ones nearly everyone in our society prefers: of Easter Bunnies and eggs and colorful signs of spring.

I think of a line we said in Friday’s Seder service here: “Oh God, help me to believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is!” I’ve always thought that was the real prayer of both Christmas and Easter: “Oh God, help me to believe the truth about life no matter how beautiful it is!”

This may not sound particularly Christian. But neither is it un-Christian, for Christianity’s greatest theologians have also rejected the supernaturalism of Christianity in favor of a deeper spiritual and psychological message. I’ll just choose one to share with you today, the great medieval mystic Meister Eckhart (1260-1327). He’s the man who once wrote that if the only prayer you ever said was “Thank you,” it would be sufficient. I couldn’t find anything in my two books of his works about the resurrection; it may not have interested him very much. But he did write about the incarnation, the idea that God could take a human form:

“It would be of little value for me that ‘the Word was made flesh’ for us in Christ as a person distinct from me unless he was also made flesh in me personally so that I too might be God’s son.” (Meister Eckhart, Essential Sermons…, p. 167) When he read that Christ “dwelt among us” he said it means “he dwelt among us because we have him in us. And anything takes its name and existence from what it has in it.” (Ibid., p. 168) And his most famous sound byte is that God became man so that man might become God.

For me, Eckhart goes too far there. Saying we’re God just sounds narcissistic and confusing to me. But I think, to use another of his wonderful lines, we all have a “God-seed” within us.

I think of a musical analogy. We’re not Mozart – I only need to try and write music myself to know how far from being Mozart I am (the choir performed an arrangement of mine on this date). But we have that within us which the music of Mozart can awaken. In the same say, we’re not Buddha or Jesus, but we have that within us that their words and their example can awaken.

That’s what Eckhart called our “God-seed”: something inside of us made out of infinite possibilities and unquenchable hope.

Does this sound too foreign? I don’t think so, I think you feel what I’m trying to get at through the clumsy tools of words. Though I’m not a poet, and real poets can come closer to it than I can. Here’s a famous poem by e.e. cummings that pretty much nails it. It’s his Easter poem:

i thank You God for most this amazing day:

 for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

 and a blue true dream of sky;

 and for everything which is natural

 which is infinite, which is yes.

(i who have died am alive again today,

 and this is the sun’s birthday;

 this is the birth day of life and of love and wings:

 and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any –

 lifted from the no of all nothing – human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

 now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

If that’s the sort of thing Easter is about, then I understand it.

Something died this year. It was another year gone by, another year of your life gone by, taking with it its unfulfilled dreams, its good intentions gone awry, its sins of commission and its sins of omission. Gone forever are the chances you didn’t take, the old possibilities you wouldn’t try, the new leaves you didn’t turn over, the dozens of ways large and small that you stayed smaller when you should have become larger. The seeds you didn’t plant last year are history now, the changes you needed to make are history now and they are gone, like messages scratched in sand on the beach.

Or someone close to you died this year. Your parents, your partner, your child, a dear friend, even a pet. Someone you loved, someone who loved you died this year, and sometimes it may seem like the emptiness will never go away. It was awful. It’s still awful.

But now comes Easter again, with its indomitable promise that death shall not have the final word, that life shall triumph over death: even here, even now. And this amazing day is filled with the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky, and everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

“Oh God, help us to believe the truth about life no matter how beautiful it is!”

“Easter Ain’t about Rabbits”

Cathy Harrington:

I have always been astounded that you can go to church on Easter in a UU church and never even hear Jesus mentioned. There will be a lovely flower communion and a sermon about spring, or how to hug a woman wearing a hat, but rarely a mention of Jesus.

In 1981, Unitarian minister Carl Scovel addressed this problem in a much talked about sermon titled, “What’s a Good Christian like You Doing in this Denomination?” At the time there was an amendment afoot to eliminate the word, “God” from the UUA bylaws. It’s a sermon worth reading. He makes this important observation,

“How ironic that an association of churches and fellowships which claims to be truly universalistic and which claims to include all points of view, not only has virtually no Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, or Jews but precious few Christians, even liberal Christians, and the numbers of those fast dwindling.”

I have been trying for months to make Davidson understand that my identity as a Christian doesn’t mean that I believe that Jesus died for my sins, or that his body came back to life and ascended on a cloud to heaven.

He says, “Why Jesus, Cathy? It’s not a very interesting story.” I disagree, and I explained to him that my not wanting the literalists to steal Jesus from me is similar to his wearing that flag pin every Sunday as a protest to the notion that we cannot be patriotic if we don’t agree with the war. So he wears his flag pin, and I’m wearing my Jesus pin. It says, “Jesus was a liberal.”

My personal understanding of the man called Jesus Christ came from the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science who wrote this about Jesus:

“The Christ was the Spirit which Jesus implied in his own statements: ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life;’ ‘I and my Father are one.’ This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him.”

Science and Health.

This spiritual description of Jesus Christ is a Unitarian theology that invites us all to claim or access our own divine nature, God-seed or Buddha seed, whichever seed suits your set of metaphors.

“Jesus had been as deeply and remarkably human as anyone his disciples had ever known; and at the same time he had been touched by God in a way that seemed to them utterly without precedent. The two things-his profound humanity, and his intense closeness to God-were bound together inextricably, and at the heart of the mystery of that bond was love, a light that never went out. Jesus’ execution horrified his disciples; yet in its wake they reflected on the man and his ministry. Understood as simply a [supernatural] physical reappearance, the Resurrection makes Jesus’ life and teachings ultimately irrelevant; it is as if Jesus, during his ministry, had just been killing time until the Main Event.”[7]

But understanding the Resurrection as a spiritual event in the minds and hearts of the disciples, as an awakening to the message of their teacher, is to understand the resurrection story as it was understood by early Christians; “not according to the theology of today’s legalistic Christians-for whom the cross is, selfishly, about substitutionary atonement, and for whom the Resurrection is the promise of an afterlife. This was added later, and was as one of my favorite professors put it, “It is purely the fiction of theologians.”

So, what does Easter story mean to me? Well, it ain’t about rabbits, and it’s impossible to share it all in one-half of a sermon. But, I can tell you this. Instead of being fragile and ending on the cross, the compassion and love the disciples had encountered in Jesus was powerful; victorious over everything, even death.”[8]

I am drawn to the significance of Mary in the tomb, as well as the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, not recognizing Jesus when he was standing right in front of them, or until he broke bread with them.

Doubt and fear were present in all four-gospel stories. “The disciples didn’t fear death at the empty tomb; they feared Life.”[9] Could it be that the motive of the gospel writers to expose our fear? Our fear that within each of us resides the seed of divinity waiting to be awakened? Are with struck with fear like “dead men”? Afraid to claim the divinity within us, waiting to be wakened by the power of love, by the breaking of spiritual bread together that we can begin to recognize the “Christ” that dwells in each of us.

Are we afraid because we know that if we awaken to the divinity in everyone, including ourselves, that we will be changed? That suddenly our lives will change with this new awareness, this “godliness” that might animate us to love one another? Should the ears of our ears awaken, and the eyes of our eyes open, could we survive? Do we dare?

So, for this Easter, the only Easter I am ever likely to spend with you; let me share just one Easter secret. The clues are everywhere, though we don’t tend to see them. Death moving into life, unbelief blossoming into belief, the lost becoming the found, and the found becoming the ecstatic: so many clues!

Here is the secret: Easter is not a noun. We talk about it as a historical event, a thing, a noun. But Easter is not a noun. It is a verb. It’s a verb meaning to awaken after being in the dark, to come alive when you never thought it could happen to you, to feel the warmth of love in a heart you were certain had cooled forever.

It’s a verb meaning you find hope and passion to replace just suffering and surviving, and the amazing transformation of spirit that comes from realizing, once more, what a magnificent and sacred gift your life is, and saying “Thank you” – right out loud.

Simply, “Thank you for the life we are blessed to share.”

Easter is a verb. Happy Eastering, you dear, blessed people!

——————–

[1] Jesus Seminar. The Five Gospels. P. 127.

[9] Gallup, Grant. Hominly Grits, Easter. 2003

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© Davidson Loehr and Cathy Harrington

22 December 2002

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

READING: “Why is it easier to love from afar?”

Some say that Mary was a virgin mother singing in glorious chorus of a savior, and that shepherds, overcome, went down and found him in a manger. While wise ones, prophet-led, brought gifts. And all these mysteries took place beneath a star so bright that all the world remembers.

Why is it easier to love from afar?

To love a family wrapped in myth and time?

To see great beauty in a mother’s face

As she radiantly smiles upon the canvas?

The child fashioned in paint or sculpted in stone is ever sweet. He does not cry and stamp his feet upon the ground and summon every shred of patience ’til his need is met. He waits there quietly, convenient to our time, An easy object to adore.

To love a child, here, now, just as they are

 is quite another thing, and hard to do.

Beloved story, inspiration, rock on which so many rest, direct us still. Lead us tonight upon the path of love, for this we know; What ever blessings,

miracles or gifts were heaped about him, there was one priceless gift that made him whole” And that was love.

This is the goal our faith has set; to spend our strength that there may be;

laid at the feet of every child, someday, the gift of love that we have offered him, the infant Jesus this once-a-year, for nineteen centuries and more.

This is the mystery we seek to solve” and this we strive to know; not that this man was strong and good, but how came he so?

HOMILY: Thoughts on Christmas

– Cathy Harrington

Bah humbug. In the past few years, I have grown to dread Christmas like a toothache. Why do we have to get into such a frenzy every year? I used to love Christmas! There is no avoiding it! It’s everywhere. Even my jazzercise class this week was exercising to an entire hour of Christmas music. Not the good Christmas music, either. The tacky stuff, like “Rockin around the Christmas Tree.” Can you imagine? I worried that I might throw up. I even put off writing this sermon until almost the last minute.

Out of sheer desperation, I did the only thing a good intern could do, I went to see my mentor. The wise Old Theologian.

In this emergency consultation with “the master,” I was tricked into reminiscing about Christmas’ past, while he listened thoughtfully. Do you have the picture?

Well, I said, I think I began to despise Christmas when I worked at the mall and I saw the truth about the Christmas season in retail business. It’s so commercial and hideous! The whole year depends on Christmas sales! Or maybe I just burned out on the whole huge job of decorating and shopping and cooking, trying to make Christmas special for my family year after year after year. OR maybe, I said, with tears choking my words, I lost the Christmas spirit the year that my father had a massive stroke and almost died. We spent Christmas in the intensive care waiting room wondering if we were going to lose him. In a way, I did lose my dad that Christmas. He couldn’t speak or swallow for over a year. He was my confidant, my advisor, my hero. I missed him so much. Yeah, maybe that was why I dread Christmas. It will never be quite the same.

But Davidson, that wise old theologian, wouldn’t let me stop there, he asked more questions…

and slowly it came to me; I have so many wonderful memories of Christmas! Christmas magic that lives in my heart and mind. Maybe that’s why we do this every year, to keep the magic alive.

Christmas time is when Love is reborn. When sacred moments are framed and stored in the recesses of our minds. The story goes that the angels brought the good news of great joy for all of the people, the birth of a savior, a messiah who is Lord. Angels were defined in my Christian Science childhood as “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect. The inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality.” And God or Lord, was defined as Love. Yes, that’s what we are welcoming into the world at Christmas, the coming of Love.

“What was Christmas like when you were a child?” he asked.

My goodness, when I was a little girl, my mother decorated the whole house and there was even a small Christmas tree in the kitchen where she hung homemade cookies and we could choose one each day before Christmas. I can still remember the wonderful smells of cookies baking and the candy cane cookies with crushed peppermint on top.

I was the youngest of four children and I remember that my father made us drink a glass of eggnog before we could go down stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left us. I hated eggnog and would choke it down. Each of us had a corner where Santa left a huge stocking filled with candy and always a navel orange in the toe, and toys, so many toys and dolls. We would charge down the stairs as fast as our little feet could carry us.

As we got older, the presents were all wrapped and we had to take turns opening them so everyone could share in the unwrapping and make it last as long as possible. We lived, by then, in a hundred year old house with six fireplaces and twelve-foot ceilings. At Christmas, the three fireplaces downstairs would be crackling with a roaring fire. In the living room, there was a huge bay window, and some friends who sold Frazier firs from Canada, cut us a special tree every year that would fill the bay window and reach to the ceiling. I can almost smell the warm crackling fire and see the twinkle of lights and ornaments. We had wonderful gatherings of feasting and story-telling. My father and my grandfather were wonderful storytellers and sometimes meals would last for hours as they traded the floor and held us spellbound. I remember laughing until it hurt and being moved to tears all in the same wonderful meal.

We had a special tree lighting ritual every year that included a champagne toast (sparkling cider for the kids) and I”ll never forget the year, my big sister’s Jewish husband spent his first Christmas with us. He was so excited and wanted to string the lights on the tree. It required a stepladder and he spent what seemed like an eternity on the job. The time came, finally, for the tree lighting and the champagne toast and we soon discovered that Stephen had put the male plug at the top of the tree. He was mortified, but we just laughed until we cried, and then we all pitched in and took off all the lights and strung them from the top to bottom.

My grandparents, Wilbur and Olga McCullough, always drove down from Indianapolis to spend Christmas with us. I can still remember watching for their big boxy Chrysler to pull into the driveway. Granddad never owned anything but Chrysler. After hugs all around, he would carry in presents to put under the already overflowing tree and we would run and snoop at each one shaking them and trying to guess what was inside.

My grandparents always gave each other the same presents every year! I loved it because you knew exactly what was going to happen. Grammy would open that familiar little package and say with feigned surprise, “Oh, Wilbur, Channel # 5! How did you ever know?” And then he would show the same funny surprise and thrill over his favorite pipe tobacco and a jar of pickled pigs feet. Amazing. It was so dear to watch and it has always been one of my favorite memories, but I only just recently discovered what it was that made that moment so special, year after year.

As Davidson listened attentively to me reminisce, he was reminded of a book in his collection. It’s a book that was written by one of his favorite professors at Chicago, Joseph Sittler, called Grace Notes, and Other Fragments. (Fortress Press) He loaned it to me and I was immediately captivated.

This grand old preacher had this to say about the title of his book, “A grace note in music can be dispensed with. It does not carry the main melody; it is not necessary to complete the structure. But it has a function. It accents a beat, underlines a moving turn of melody, freshens a phrase, turns something well-known into something breathtaking.”

In one of his stories, he speaks of marriage as ‘the mutual acceptance of the challenge to fulfill the seemingly impossible.” An enduring and difficult commitment to hang in there during the hard times and the dull times year after year, and the times when you don’t even want to talk to each other. As one person put it, “It’s just kind of nice to know that there is someone there that you don’t want to talk to.” But, there is a reward that comes with the years of toughing it out. ‘then there is something that is really worth the human effort.” (Grace Notes and Other Fragments by Joseph Sittler)

To illustrate, Sittler borrows a story by Flannery O”Connor of “an old couple who lived all their lives in a little cabin overlooking the opposite mountain. They were sitting there “both very old people”in their rocking chairs on a spring day. The man said, “Well Sarah, I see there’s still some snow up there on the mountain.” Now he knew there was snow on the mountain every year. She knew there was snow on the mountain every year. So why does he have to say it? Because to perceive that, to know that at times there is snow and at times there is not snow’this was part of the observation of an eternal rhythm which made their life together. In marriage you say the same things over and over, you give each other the same presents every year, and this is ho-hum in one way. But it is breathtaking in another.” (Sittler)

When I read those words, I thought, “Yes, that’s it!” It seems ho-hum, giving each other the same gifts every year and staging the show of mock surprise and genuine delight. But it wasn’t ho-hum. It was breathtaking. It gave us little kids the rare chance to see our own grandparents sharing that eternal rhythm of giving and receiving gifts that were always expected, always cherished. It moves me to this day. It is a sacred memory. That’s why I can still remember it so fondly all these years later.

The grace notes. December 25th is just another day and could be simply ignored and the world would still spin and the sun would still rise and set. But, when we take the time to celebrate the sacred, create memories and give space for Love to be reborn in our lives, it is like magic. Like the grace notes are to a melody, accenting a beat, underlining a moving turn of life, freshening a year, turning something ho-hum into something breathtaking.

To think I might have missed that sweet drama acted out year after year, or more likely in one form or another, day after day, by my grandparents. I might have missed it and never would have known what I know now about Love”it’s the magic of Christmas.

Something Holy happens when we can see through the ho-hum of yet another Christmas and listen with expectation for those sweet and sublime grace notes. The breathtaking exchanges of simple gifts, the shouts of glee and the quiet and warm looks of gratitude for simply being together again.

It makes all that frenzy worth the effort. Yeah, It really does.

Merry Christmas!

SERMON:

“For unto you is born this day…”

Davidson Loehr

Like Cathy, I often have to fight the bah-humbugs at Christmas. I have to remember that these are supposed to be holy days, and do some work to build the manger where holy days might have a place to be born.

I read this Christmas passage in the Bible, to try and get in the mood:

“And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day a Savior….

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, to people of good will.”

That’s really pretty. Though when I ask what this has to do with our world today, nothing comes to mind.

But unless miracles like that still happen, unless a Savior, a child of God, can still be born and the angels can still sing out, these are just old fairy tales.

I”ll admit that having a child dedication ceremony as we did awhile ago makes it easy to be reminded that each of those children is a miracle, and a child of God. But is that all the old Christmas story can remind us of – babies? After we’re born, are there no more miracles? Is that all there is?

In this frame of mind, the story I thought of isn’t exactly a Christmas story. It involved real people: people I knew. And it happened at Christmastime, twenty-one years ago.

Merry spelled her name M-e-r-r-y, but the happy name didn’t describe her. We dated for a little while, then decided we made better friends. She was 23, bright as could be, in her fourth year of graduate school, having finished college at 19. I had been attracted by her brilliance.

But there was a great sadness in her, which came from a deep place. She never felt good enough, and the voices telling her she wasn’t good enough were very old.

I introduced her to Phil, a 60-year-old man who taught religion and psychology and who was, I imagined, a creative psychotherapist. They hit it off, and I heard sketchy updates from Merry over the next few months.

It was tough. You never know where or how a bright and attractive young woman first picks up the message that she isn’t good enough, though of course it happens.

Finally in one furious therapy session, Merry acknowledged for the first time a deep rage at her mother.

Phil got creative. He used the Gestalt therapy technique of putting an empty chair in front of Merry, facing her. “I want you to imagine your mother is sitting in that chair,” he said. “And I want you to tell her everything you wish you could say to her.”

Within fifteen seconds, she was screaming. And for several loud minutes, it poured out. Pent-up anger over years of feeling put-down, demeaned, dismissed. She remembered an old dream she had had where she was invisible to her mother, no matter how hard she tried. She told the empty chair she had never felt loved, not once.

At their next session, Phil asked her to go sit in her mother’s chair, and as her mother, respond to the charges Merry had leveled against her.

It took a little longer, but within about a minute, Merry said, she had become her mother. Her voice, her face, her posture became aggressive and accusatory. She began shouting back at Merry’s chair:

“You are such a complete failure! You have been the biggest disappointment of my career! You weren’t smart or pretty enough to get by without work, and you never worked hard enough. I wanted a daughter I could be proud of, and I got you! I am ashamed of you! You aren’t worth loving!”

Looking back on it, Merry said the voice was just horrible, like the screech of ancient Greek Harpies. It poisoned all the air in the room.

Then Phil did a second creative thing. He suggested that the two of them take a walk around the block for some fresh air. He took her mother’s chair out of the room as they left.

It was a week before Christmas in Chicago: cold, snowy and windy. When they returned, Phil did something else very creative. He took another chair, the nicest one in the office, and put it where Merry’s mother’s chair had been. He asked Merry to sit in the new chair. He told her this was God’s chair. He asked her now to become God, and see what God had to say to Merry.

At first, she just sat there, trying to imagine what it should feel like to be God. Then she leaned forward, looked straight into the invisible Merry’s eyes, and spoke. It was a voice so gentle, so tender, neither of them knew where it had come from:

“Oh, my Merry,” said God. “You are my beloved daughter and in you I am much pleased. Inside of you I placed a soul so vulnerable it has never dared to come forth. More than anything in the world, I want you to let that soul give birth to the Merry that I created. Be happy, my daughter. Be whole. Know that you are precious and know that I love you.”

God stopped talking. Merry went back to her own chair. She looked at the place where God had appeared and said “Oh, praise God!” Then she cried, and cried, and cried.

She had occasional therapy sessions with Phil over the next couple years until she graduated, but she said that day when she became God had been the turning point of her life. It was the birth of a new Merry that was slowly but surely becoming whole and happy.

A couple years later, when we got the happy news that Merry had gotten married, I told Phil the story as Merry had shared it with me, and I asked him how he would describe what happened, psychologically. He gave me kind of a mechanical explanation, saying that through the empty chair exercise she began to move into a more positive self-assessment by using the projected voice of her loving God to trump the projected voice of her hateful mother.

It sounded funny to hear it all described like that, though in its own way it was probably accurate. But he left out the most important part. Because on that day when Merry was reborn, a miracle happened. And far above them, in the heavens, I know that an angel cried out,

“Fear not: behold I bring you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day a Savior, the daughter of God.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, to people of good will.”

I know in my heart that it happened just like that. Merry Christmas, good people, Merry Christmas!

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Davidson Loehr and Cathy Harrington

November 24, 2002

Text of this sermon is not available but you can listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Celebration of Thanksgiving 2002